


Canticles

by tarysande



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alphabet Fic Meme, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 36,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glimpses into Sebastian Vael's past and present, one letter at a time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Andraste

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the alphabet character meme.

**A is for Andraste**

Sebastian sits at the end of the row in his family’s fancy box at the chantry, careful not to let his thigh touch his brother’s (he’ll get a poke in the ribs, otherwise, or a smack to the back of the head. He’s not as stupid as they always say he is; he’s learned his lesson), kicking his short legs back and forth, back and forth. He’s so bored, but if he whines he’ll get worse than a poke to the ribs. He’s learned that lesson, too.

At the front of the chapel a Mother is talking (not _his_ mother; his brothers still make fun of him for that one time he called Mother Theodora ‘Mama’. How was he to know? He sees Mother Theodora _more_ than he sees his own mother.). This Mother is going on and on and on, using big words he doesn’t really understand. Words like _wicked_ and _wrath_ and _corrupt_. He thinks they sound like scary words not worth talking about at all, and he shivers, kicking his feet harder. Behind the Mother is a golden statue. He loves the statue; he always feels like the golden lady is looking right at him, and he doesn’t think she’s scary at all. Sometimes he feels like no one else ever looks at him, really. Mother and Father are always so busy, and his brothers are older. They call him baby and run away, laughing, faster than Sebastian’s pudgy little legs can follow. Once a week he gets to visit his grandfather, but his grandfather’s even busier than Mother and Father. Sebastian likes his grandfather, though. Just like he likes the statue of the golden lady. His grandfather always looks right at him and asks him questions and never, ever calls him baby.

He would never, ever, _ever_ tell anyone, but sometimes he sneaks out of his room (he’s very good at sneaking) and hides in the chapel. He sits at the base of the statue of the golden lady and he tells her all his problems. Her eyes always look at him. She always listens. She’s always there. She can’t fix anything, but somehow talking to her always makes him feel better.

A big hand lands on one of his thighs, making him jump and squeak. He blinks up at his father, who looks angry, his eyebrows bushy and dark over eyes as blue as Sebastian’s own. His father almost always looks angry. Sebastian thinks it might have something to do with the eyebrows. Or maybe his father _is_ always angry.

This thought makes him sad. And also a little scared.

“Have some _respect,_ boy,” his father growls, _definitely_ angry.

Sebastian nods, terrified, and stills his kicking legs. He folds his hands dutifully in his lap and stares straight ahead, willing himself not to cry. He fails, of course, but everyone pretends not to notice, just like always. He hears one of his brothers snicker, though. Sebastian will get teased about it later. It’s just the way things are.

The golden lady sees, though. She sees everything, and she always listens. It’s why he loves her best of all.

#

Sebastian rises from prayer, knees aching, just in time to turn and see Hawke approaching. She gives him a brief wave and a broad smile. He loves her smile; it’s so inclusive. It was very nearly the first thing he noticed about her. She’d been telling him about killing mercenaries, and he’d been thinking about her smile. (Not that she’d been grinning about taking lives, but he’d seen the hint of mirth playing at the corners of her lips when she first entered the chantry. Something one of her companions had said, perhaps. He’d been ruminating on that smile before he realized she was actually approaching _him_ , and not one of the Revered Mothers.) 

As she launches into a description of the latest quest she’d like his help with—slavers, this time—Sebastian glances over Hawke’s shoulder and meets the golden gaze of Andraste. All these years, and he still feels like the statue _sees_ him, sees him when so few others do.

“Something on your mind?” Hawke asks.

Sebastian turns, blinks at her. “Pardon me?”

Gesturing with her chin toward the statue, Hawke says, “You got the strangest look on your face just now. You, uh… you don’t have to come, if you don’t want. If you’re busy. I can always ask Varric. Or Fenris. Or something.”

It takes him a moment to find words, and he hates how his hesitation steals the smile from her face. “I was only giving thanks,” he says at last. “You need never doubt my willingness, Hawke; I am always happy to lend you my aid.”

 _You see me, too,_ he thinks, astonished, because only _just now_ has he realized it’s true.

As if reading this thought—and perhaps she does; sometimes he believes his face is an open book to her—she meets his gaze (without hesitation, without judgment, without doubt) and again her warm smile overspreads her face.

“Right, then,” she says, clapping a hand to his shoulder, “shall we be off? Slaves to free, slavers to kill?”

He nods, and though he doesn’t turn again to the statue, he feels the golden eyes on him, and he almost imagines Andraste smiling as well.


	2. B is for Baby

**B is for Baby**

When he’s five, Sebastian sees his mother happy for the first time.

He hadn’t ever realized she was _unhappy_ before, but when he’s five, everything changes. She laughs and sings and sometimes she even picks him up and hugs him without him having to beg first.

Her stomach gets really big, but instead of being mad (and he’s seen her get mad because of not fitting into dresses and _stupid laundresses_ and _that’s it, no more desserts with dinner_ ) she walks around smiling all the time, her hands folded over her belly.

“Mama,” he says, and instead of scowling and correcting him (he’s supposed to call her _Mother_ now, because he’s not a baby anymore), she waves him over and pats the seat next to her. She lets him snuggle up close, and he rests his face against her stomach while she runs gentle fingers through his hair.

Then the belly _moves_. He jumps back, nearly falling off the divan and onto the ground, but his mother catches him at the last moment. She laughs. Really laughs, and holds him close. He lets her, although he’s still scared of… of whatever it was he felt.

“What was _that_?”

“Your sister,” his mother says. She looks past him, and for a moment he sees the old sadness on her face. Then she shakes her head and the smile returns. “Silly Sebastian. Don’t you realize? I’m having a baby.”

“But _I’m_ the baby.”

“Not for long.” She ruffles his hair. “You’ll be a good big brother.”

He feels a swell of pride in his chest. He _will_. He will be the _best_ big brother. He’ll be nothing like his brothers were to him.

Another flash of sadness skims over his mother’s features and she winces, touching her stomach again. “Run along now,” she commands him softly. “I’m so tired all of a sudden.”

He goes, already thinking about all the games he will play with his new sister when she comes. He decides he will never run away from her faster than she can follow, and if Angus and Connall are mean to her, he’ll punch them right in their noses as hard as he can. He’ll even teach her all her letters and numbers so she won’t have to learn from bored nurses. He’ll protect her and take care of her and make sure she always knows she’s loved.

That night at dinner, though, half-lost in daydreams (he wonders what they’ll name her; he likes the name Bluebell, like the flowers), he realizes something is wrong.

“Where’s Mama?”

No one answers him, not even to correct Mama to Mother. Her absence is strange, though, since she never misses dinner and she’s been so hungry lately. He repeats the question.

With an expression caught somewhere between anger and annoyance, his father says, “Eat your dinner, lad, before it gets cold.”

“Is she still tired?”

“Sebastian.”

He hesitates. “Is she… is she sick?”

“ _Sebastian._ ”

Connall kicks him under the table, hard. Sebastian winces, but doesn’t make a sound. And he doesn’t ask any more questions.

But later, once his nurse is sleeping (she always falls asleep early, knitting in front of the big fire), Sebastian makes a pretend-Sebastian out of pillows under his blankets and creeps through the halls until he reaches his mother’s rooms. The guard outside glares down at him, but Sebastian straightens his shoulders and juts out his chin the way he sees Father do when he’s about to be very serious or very angry.

“You don’t want to go in there, young Highness,” the man says at last, and his voice is somehow kinder than Sebastian was expecting.

“Is my mother in there?”

The guard nods.

“Is she okay?”

He shakes his head. “It happens sometimes, lad. Nothing anyone could have done.”

Sebastian tilts his head, trying to puzzle out the man’s meaning.

The guard crouches down, looking Sebastian in the eyes. “The baby,” he explains gently. “Came early. Didn’t make it. Your mother… well. She’s had a hard time. It’s to be expected.”

“No,” Sebastian says. “I don’t believe you. She was fine. I’m going to be a big brother. I’m going to be the _best_ big brother.”

The guard doesn’t stop him when he runs past and opens the door. It smells funny, and the room is too hot. One of his mother’s handmaids tries to shoo him out, but he darts past her (he’s always been as quick as he is sneaky) and flings himself on his mother’s bed. He sees right away her stomach’s not as big. His mother looks at him, right at him, and in a dead voice grates, “I wanted her. I wanted her. Not you. _Her_. Where’s my little girl? Where’s my little girl? Where is she? _Where is she?_ ”

He flees as his mother starts to scream, and the handmaid tries in vain to hold her down.

He never sees his mother happy again. Not once. Not ever.

#

Sebastian enters the clinic, but the healer doesn’t look up. Anders has his back to the door, and his shoulders are hunched as he scribbles away. “Help,” Sebastian gasps, almost breathless, his lungs burning. He’s never hated the heaviness of his armor more than he does in this instant. “Help her. Help her.”

Anders looks up, and for a moment Sebastian thinks the mage will argue or turn him away, but then he sees the woman.

“Andraste’s tits,” Anders swears under his breath, already crossing the dingy room, already gesturing for Sebastian to set his burden down on one of the makeshift beds. “Who is she?”

Sebastian has no idea. He’d been delivering food to the needy in Darktown when the woman approached him, clutching her stomach and _screaming._ He hadn’t thought, really. He’d just dropped his parcels of food, scooped her up, and headed immediately for the clinic at a run.

She’d stopped screaming five minutes ago, but his ears still ring with the sound.

Anders doesn’t wait for the answer Sebastian can’t offer. His hands begin to glow, and Sebastian feels the familiar shiver of awe mixed with fear that always attends the use of magic.

But then the glow fades, too soon.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Anders says quietly, folding the woman’s hands over her huge belly. “It’s too late.”

Sudden rage chokes him, turns his vision red, and before he can stop himself, Sebastian reaches out and grips the mage’s shoulder, giving it a single rough shake. “ _Help her_ ,” he growls. “You… you have power. _Do_ something. _Use_ it.”

Anders’ eyes narrow, and he jerks his arm violently away from Sebastian’s grip. “It’s too late,” he repeats.

“Then what good is it for? Do _something._ Save—save the baby, at least.”

“It’s _too late_ ,” Anders says a third time. He reaches over and covers the woman with a dingy cloth. “I’m sorry. It happens sometimes. You did what you could. Nothing anyone could have done.”

Sebastian takes a step backward, startled, and raises his hand to his face.

“Maker,” Anders says, “she wasn’t…”

“Of course not,” Sebastian snaps, too harsh, too angry. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath, searching desperately for calm, for peace. It’s hard to find. Prayers disappear unspoken as Sebastian remembers the look in his mother’s eyes and the words _I wanted her. Not you._ When he speaks, the anger has drained away, leaving only helplessness, “I only… I only wanted to help.”

Anders rests his fingertips gently on Sebastian’s shoulder. “Don’t we all.”


	3. C is for Cards

**C is for Cards**  


Sebastian is excited when his brothers offer to teach him how to play cards—and more than that, when they actually allow him to _play cards with them_. He’s been waiting so long to be let into their little circle (they were born only a year apart, and Sebastian, at eight, is five whole years younger than Connall), and at last this seems his chance. 

His brothers always win. Sometimes Angus. Sometimes Connall. They haven’t any money to play with, so they bet treasures. Connall wins Sebastian’s favorite toy knight (even though Connall’s too old to play with toys—or so he says), and Angus wins the collection of pretty stones Sebastian has been gathering as long as he can remember. He parts with these things reluctantly, but doesn’t protest: he’s lost fair and square, and if there’s one thing Father hates, it’s a sore loser.

Still, the more Sebastian thinks about it, the more baffled he becomes. Each time he plays with his brothers, the rules seem to change. Finally, determined to get to the bottom of things (the knight he doesn’t care about, but he really misses the stones), he hunts down the guard who has been his friend since the night his sister came too soon.

“Guardsman Elias,” Sebastian says, very seriously, “I need you to explain the rules of Wicked Grace.”

The guardsman gives an uneasy chuckle and glances over his shoulder, as if expecting a reprimand. “Now what in the Maker’s name might you need to know that for, Your Highness?”

Sebastian scowls, scuffing his toe against the stone. “My brothers taught me. They keep winning. But I think they’re confused about the rules. They keep changing them.”

Elias snorts. “That’s not _confusion_ , lad. That’s _cheating._ ”

Sebastian nods. “I thought so. They laugh too much, and they give each other _looks_.”

Very patiently, in great detail, Elias explains the rules of Wicked Grace—and Diamondback, and Black Queen, and half a dozen other games besides—and Sebastian sits on the floor laboriously writing everything in a notebook he has brought along for this purpose. It takes a very long time, but in the end he’s certain his brothers will never be able to dupe him again.

The next time they play, Sebastian pulls out his little book. He tells them he was confused, but didn’t want to bother them, so he asked someone else instead. “It’s all right,” he says, “now I know _all_ the rules.” 

This time when his brothers look at each other, the _look_ they share isn’t a triumphant one. Sebastian pretends not to know they were cheating, and, guided by his notes, they reluctantly play by the rules. Connall always smirks when he has good cards. Angus taps his fingers when he has bad ones. Sebastian notices all kinds of things like this; he’s good at noticing.

Sebastian doesn’t tell them what he sees. He wins back his toy knight. And his stones. And Angus’ knife. He knows he could win Connall’s, too, but he throws the game, just so they won’t get angry and stop playing.

Sebastian is eight when he realizes he can beat his brothers at cards. Every. Single. Time. 

#

The first couple of times Hawke invites him to join the card games at The Hanged Man, Sebastian declines. Playing wouldn’t go against any of his vows, precisely, but cards remind him too much of the many, many things cards had _led_ to, once upon a time. After the third or fourth turned down invitation, Sebastian notices a marked coolness—not from Hawke, but from the others, and he realizes he’s misstepped. For them cards are not just _cards_ ; the game is secondary to the fellowship of such evenings. He hadn’t meant to snub them. With regret, he understands they think _he_ thinks he’s too good for their evenings of gambling and gossip.

He accepts the fifth invitation. It’s extended after a particularly grueling day on the Wounded Coast. Even Isabela is dragging her heels, and Fenris hasn’t spoken in hours. Both perk up at the mention of cards. (And the drinks attending those cards, Sebastian expects.) When he agrees, Hawke’s eyes widen, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to fling her arms around him—she does things like that; Fenris has nearly killed her for it half a dozen times—but instead she only curls her hand into a loose fist and punches him lightly on the shoulder. “Varric’s going to be sour when he realizes he’s lost the bet.”

“The bet?”

“That you’d never come, of course.”

It makes him uncomfortable, thinking of them all speaking about him behind his back, though he supposes he can’t blame them. And he knows the others more or less only accept him because Hawke has asked them to. Theirs is just another little circle he doesn’t quite belong to.

“You thought I would?”

She grins, reaching up to tuck a loose lock of red hair behind her ear. He tells himself he doesn’t wish his was the hand doing that tucking. (He knows it’s a lie.) “I thought I could wear you down eventually.”

“We have bets on that, too,” Isabela pipes up.

Hawke blushes and turns away, picking up the pace.

Later, when he’s sitting at the big table in Varric’s suite nursing a glass of very mediocre wine (how Fenris manages to put away so much of it, he’ll never know), Sebastian gauges his companions, _noticing_. Isabela cheats, but he knew that already. Cheating—and not getting caught cheating—is as much a part of the game as the rules, for her. Fenris makes the mistakes of a beginner, and Anders of someone whose mind is elsewhere. Aveline is very good, and it takes him several rounds to peg her tells. 

Varric plays the way Sebastian _used_ to play—like a rich man who doesn’t care as much about winning and losing as he does about everyone around the table having a good time. The dwarf spends just as much time helping Merrill with her hands as he does playing his own. 

Everyone takes turns winning, it seems. Sebastian can tell the more talented players are letting the less skilled ones win, on occasion. He does the same. 

More than once, however, the round comes down to Sebastian and Hawke.

Hawke beats him. Every. Single. Time.

He walks her home afterward, and though they first talk of other things (the Wounded Coast, Varric’s generosity at picking up the tab, Anders’ abrupt exit halfway through the evening), he can’t hold his tongue. (He refuses to blame the one glass of wine that had mysteriously turned into most of a bottle over the course of the evening.)

 “Tell me,” he blurts, unable to keep the genuine curiosity from his tone, “how did you do that?”

“Do what?” she replies, all innocence.

“You didn’t cheat. I know what cheating looks like. How did you win?”

“Oh.” She smiles a sweet, enigmatic little smile, and reaches up to tap one fingertip against his cheekbone. “I figured out your tell.”


	4. D is for Dog

**D is for Dog**

Sebastian doesn’t adopt the dog. The dog adopts him. 

One morning when Sebastian’s alone in the practice yard the dog appears, trots over, and sits at his feet. Sebastian looks around, trying to spot the dog’s owner; he’s not one of the kennel pups, and he’s certainly not one of the lapdogs his mother’s ladies favor. He sees no one. Just the unassuming dog, who has a white patch over one eye, and whose left ear flops while the right sticks straight up, giving him a perpetually befuddled air.

He ignores the animal, trying in vain to aim and shoot the way Guardsman Elias has shown him (Guardsman Elias is very, very good with a bow; Sebastian hopes he can be half so good one day). The bow fights him, pulling left, and the arrow flies wild. The dog at his feet yips, almost like a laugh, and when Sebastian looks down again, the pup is looking back at him, tongue lolling.

“It’s not funny,” Sebastian tells the dog. “I have to be good at _something_ worthwhile.”

The dog only walks in three little circles and curls up, tucking his tail over his nose and gazing up at him.

Every time Sebastian goes to the yard to practice, the dog appears. After the second day, he fills his pockets with bits and pieces of leftover breakfast. The dog accepts these offerings before once again taking his place at Sebastian’s feet.

One day, nearly a fortnight after the dog’s first appearance, Sebastian is flinging arrow after arrow in the vague direction of the target (none of them are hitting) when his father appears. Sebastian tenses at once. Father doesn’t think much of archery; he’s a swordsman, and a good one. Rumor amongst the guards (Sebastian always listens; he’s as good at listening as he is at sneaking and noticing) says Lachlan Vael is so good with a blade no man has dueled him twice. And he’s never lost.

Sebastian has doubts about the latter—everyone loses sometimes; that’s what Grandfather says—but he knows his father is skilled. And he knows his father is _endlessly disappointed_ Sebastian is _not_. The youngest son is supposed to lead the militia; it’s his role, it’s what he’s meant to do. His father believes a proper leader should be in the vanguard, though, and archers don’t do that.

Sebastian is used to disappointing his father, so instead of worrying when he appears, he only draws another arrow from his quiver, aims, and looses. This one falls short. The next actually hits the practice butt, but only the very edge; it misses the rings entirely and sticks straight into the straw.

His father says nothing. The dog remains at Sebastian’s feet, curled into a little brown ball, one ear sticking up and the other flopped down, same as always.

For another hour Sebastian shoots without stopping, until his tunic clings to him, his hair hangs in his eyes, and even the dog seems impatient.

“It’s time you had a room of your own,” his father says. “You’re ten. You don’t belong in the nursery anymore.”

Sebastian lowers the bow, turning to really look at his father for the first time since he came out into the yard. He doesn’t say _Maker, it’s about time_ or _Connall and Angus were allowed to move out of the nursery when they were years younger than I am now._ He says, “Thank you, Father. I’d like that.”

“Who does the dog belong to?”

Sebastian blinks at the question and shakes his head. “I don’t know. He’s been here for two weeks.”

“Have you fed him?”

Reluctantly, Sebastian nods.

Instead of anger, or irritation, or frustration, or any of the expressions Sebastian is used to seeing on his father’s face, he sees only a kind of dark thoughtfulness. “He’s yours now, then. See you take care of him. And don’t be foisting him off on the servants. You’re nearly grown, lad. It’s time you had some responsibility.”

Thank you seems the wrong thing to say, but he feels like he should say _something_. Before the words come, though, his father is gone again, striding into the palace with shoulders straight and head lifted proudly.

Sebastian kneels down in the dirt, heedless of the mess it makes of his trousers, and lets himself pet the dog for the first time. “You hear that, pup? You’re mine now.”

The dog gives him a skeptical look, one that says _how stupid are you? I’ve been yours all along._

Then again, maybe it’s just the uneven ears. Sebastian doesn’t care.

#

The first time the mabari shows up, Sebastian thinks Hawke must be just around the corner, but he waits several minutes and she never appears. Then he decides the hound is lost. 

Sebastian is practicing archery, as is his wont, in a secluded part of the chantry gardens. He rarely misses his shots now, but still, he doesn’t want to unduly frighten anyone out for a stroll. Sometimes he goes to the Gallows, to make use of their proper archery range, but not often. He does not like the _feeling_ the Gallows gives him; he never has. The walls always feel as though they’re closing in there, no matter how much sky one can see.

Hawke’s huge dog approaches, tilts his head, and greets Sebastian with a low bark.

“You’re far from home,” Sebastian remarks. “Does she know where you are?”

The dog wags his stubby tail.

Laughing, Sebastian gathers his bow and quiver and walks the mabari back to Hawke’s Hightown home. He finds Hawke in her own garden, practicing her own archery, and when she asks if he’d like to join her, he accepts; the little range she’s built for herself is pleasant, and the company even more so.

“Bad dog,” Hawke chides, aiming and loosing an arrow. A moment later it quivers from the bull’s eye. “Sandal’s been looking for you all morning.”

The mabari pants, his expression very clearly a canine grin, before settling himself in the soft dirt of one of the flowerbeds.

“On your head be it if Mother sees you,” Hawke says. The dog yawns.

By the third or fourth time Sebastian looks up from his chantry-garden practice to see Hawke’s hound watching him, he understands the mabari’s not _lost_ , he’s _visiting._ Sometimes he and the hound go for long walks. Sometimes they sit in the shade and Sebastian feeds him scraps salvaged from breakfast, like he used to feed a different pup, long ago. Sometimes Sebastian tells the mabari stories. It’s silly, perhaps, but the dog seems to like it well enough. Then, after an hour or an afternoon, Sebastian returns with the dog to Hawke’s manor, and invariably stays to practice, or for tea, or, occasionally, for dinner.

Every time, Hawke only shrugs and laughs. “He likes who he likes, and that’s all there is to it,” she opines, giving Sebastian a bemused look that says _what are you going to do?_ “Dogs.”

 _Aye_ , he thinks. _Dogs._


	5. E is for Elthina

**E is for Elthina**

The new Grand Cleric is coming to Starkhaven. Sebastian only met the last Grand Cleric twice (or so he’s told; he doesn’t remember either occasion), but illness had made the journey to Starkhaven from Kirkwall difficult, and so it has been many years since the last visit. 

Even though the palace is buzzing with preparatory activity, Sebastian doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care about any of it.

It is the worst day of his life, and an old lady visiting from far away holds very little relevance. She’ll come, there will be a feast, and she’ll go.

And at the end of her visit, his dog will still be dead.

Even his father, never shy about blame where blame is due, takes Sebastian aside and tells him it isn’t his fault, but Sebastian doesn’t care. He keeps seeing it again and again and again, every time he closes his eyes, even if he’s just _blinking._

It happens like this:

(Again and again and again.)

He and Pup (sometimes a dog doesn’t need a fancy name. Sebastian is Sebastian. Pup is Pup) are in the practice yard. It’s busier than usual; people are preparing for the Grand Cleric’s visit. Sebastian is shooting (he’s still not very good, but Guardsman Elias says he’s getting better). Pup is sitting at his feet.

The other dog comes out of nowhere. It’s one of the hunting hounds, big and mean and trained to take down wounded deer, and it springs right for Sebastian’s throat.

Pup, half the other dog’s size and no match, jumps in the way. Knocks Sebastian off balance. Takes the blow. Sebastian stumbles backward as an arrow fells the hunting dog. He recognizes Guardsman Elias’ fletching. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s too late for Pup. Sebastian’s little brown dog lies crumpled at his feet. The white patch around his eye is bloody. One ear sticks straight up. The other flops down. Same as always.

But different. Because all the life is gone. The ears can’t twitch with happiness or quiver with excitement. They’re completely still.

“He bought us enough time to save you,” Guardsman Elias says, while Sebastian kneels in the dust and the dirt, cradling the lifeless, bloody body, whispering prayers under his breath that no one answers. “He died a hero, lad.”

Sebastian rises to his feet, glaring over his shoulder, still holding Pup close. 

“I’m not your _lad_ ,” Sebastian snaps. The dog is still warm, but he’s not breathing. “I’m a _prince of Starkhaven_.”

Every time he closes his eyes. Again and again. _He died a hero, lad._

But he _died_. Being a hero doesn’t matter at all.

He can’t sleep. He tries, but he keeps seeing Pup jump up, snarling. He keeps seeing the other dog’s huge jaws closing around Pup’s slender throat. So even though he knows he has a long day ahead of him, Sebastian pushes back the covers and heads to the door. He waits for Pup to follow because Pup _always_ follows; he’s a good dog, Sebastian’s trained him to be a good dog.

It’s strange how grief, when it strikes, actually _feels like pain_. Like physical _pain._ Worse than being hit in the practice yard. Worse than being tyrannized by his brothers. Worse than Father’s displeasure. And it goes on and on and on.

Sebastian goes to the chapel. He has to pick the lock (he’s getting better at picking locks, but this one isn’t hard). The chapel has already been decorated and cleaned and polished for the Grand Cleric’s visit.

The golden lady stands watch, as ever. He thinks her eyes look sad. He wants to be angry with her, with the Maker, with everyone and everything. He wants to snap and snarl the way he’d done at Elias earlier (even though he feels bad about it now; it wasn’t the guardsman’s fault). Instead, he sits at the base of the statue and wraps his arms tight around his gangly legs, pressing his face into his knees.

If he’d been anyone else (anyone not as good at listening and noticing) he might not have heard the rustle of someone else entering the chapel. The intruder was very quiet, betrayed only by the faint whisk of cloth against stone.

Caught, startled and hurt and a little embarrassed, Sebastian snaps, “Who’s there?”

He peers around the statue and sees an older woman in Chantry robes. “I didn’t know anyone was here,” she says. “Forgive me. I’ll leave you to your prayers.”

“I wasn’t praying.”

“No?”

“No. I’m angry. I came here to be angry.”

The woman nods, taking a step closer. Sebastian doesn’t quite pull away, but he flinches. She raises her hands as if to prove she means no harm. “Sometimes prayers are angry.”

“No,” he repeats, “they’re boring.”

The woman has a kind smile. Against his will, he finds himself almost liking her. Then he scowls. Hard.

“You’re right,” she agrees. “Sometimes they are boring.”

He blinks at her. “You can’t say that.”

“Can I not?”

He points at her clothes. “You’re a Revered Mother.”

“Revered Mothers aren’t allowed to find prayers boring, but little boys are?”

He glares. “I’m not little. I’m eleven. I have responsibilities. Or I did.”

She inclines her head, accepting his point. She doesn’t come any closer, but Sebastian sees her eyeing the statue. He wonders if he thinks the golden lady’s eyes seem sad today, too. He sighs. “You don’t have to leave, if you don’t like. It’s not my chapel.”

“May I sit next to you?”

He gives her a skeptical look. “On the floor?”

“It’s good enough for you. And it’s a nice statue. I wouldn’t mind sitting close to her.”

He thinks about this for several long moments before giving a firm nod and scooting aside. The Revered Mother comes close, gathering her robes and lowering herself to the ground. He hears her bones creak and her knees pop, but she’s still smiling.

“What’s your name?” he asks. Then he remembers she’s a _Revered Mother_ and he ducks his head, ashamed of his own impertinence. He knows better. “I’m sorry, Your Reverence.”

“None of that,” she insists. “We’re just two pilgrims tonight, aren’t we? Hoping for a little guidance and a little comfort. I’m Elthina. And you?”

“Sebastian.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Sebastian. Now you and I are on our way to being proper friends, I don’t suppose you want to tell me why you’re sitting here all alone in the middle of the night?”

His breath catches. Again and again and again. “My dog died,” he says. “I couldn’t save him. He was… he was my best friend.”

She puts a comforting arm around his shoulder. She’s warm and soft and smells of peppermints and Andraste’s Grace. Sebastian stares straight ahead, biting on his tongue to keep from crying. Father says weeping is a sign of weakness, and princes can’t be weak. Not _ever._

“That’s a terrible thing,” she says quietly. “You can cry if you want to, you know. It’s all right.”

He doesn’t think. He turns his face into her shoulder and _cries_. For Pup. For himself. He cries and cries and cries, and when Elthina murmurs words of consolation, when she tells him it won’t hurt like this forever, he believes her. 

The next day, when Prince Sebastian meets Grand Cleric Elthina, he blinks several times and his bow of greeting is a little jerky. She only smiles at him, the same kind smile as she’d given the night before, and tells him it’s nice to see him again.

#

He doesn’t sit at the base of the statue anymore (besides which, the Andraste in Kirkwall’s Chantry seems so much more _menacing_ than the smaller, kinder golden lady he told all his troubles to in Starkhaven), but Sebastian often goes to the chapel in the middle of the night. He likes the silence. He likes the solitude.

Even if the answers he asks for never come.

He has been sitting alone with his thoughts and his prayers for some time when the Grand Cleric slips into the pew beside him. With some embarrassment, he realizes he has not seen her for weeks; slaying slavers with Hawke turned into a trip to Sundermount, and the trip to Sundermount took longer than expected when they got turned around in the endless warren of caves.

“Forgive me, Your Grace,” he says without preamble. “I did not intend to be gone so long.”

Every time he sees the Grand Cleric—every time he joins Hawke on one of her quests; every time he goes away and comes back again—he thinks she looks a little older, a little more worn. The troubles in the city, with the Qunari, with Meredith and the mages—even, he supposes regretfully, with _him_ —are taking their toll. Still, even if there is some sadness to it, she always has a smile for him. She smiles now, and the fondness outweighs the sorrow.

“You are not beholden to me, Sebastian. You know that.”

He glances at the stones beneath his feet, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks. He’s not beholden to her because he broke his vows when he swore vengeance for what was done to his family, and she will not let him speak those words again, no matter how he pleads. He must prove himself, and he doesn’t know how.

Following every time Hawke crooks her finger probably isn’t the best way. He knows this, too. And yet he goes. Every time. And tells himself it’s because he owes her a debt, because he made her a promise, because she helped him first.

“And I don’t say those words to hurt you, child. You know that, too. I only came to offer a shoulder, if you need it. You seem troubled.” Here the smile does fade into sadness, and she shakes her head. “ _More_ troubled.”

“It is I who ought to offer you the shoulder,” he insists. “My troubles are little enough, compared with yours.”

She laughs, leaning back, folding her hands comfortably across her belly. “Is it a contest now?”

“Of course not!”

She sends him a slantwise look. “It was a jest, Sebastian. Only a jest.”

He leans forward, resting his elbows heavily on his knees. After a moment, he feels one of her small hands on his shoulder.

Without looking at her, he says, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, Sebastian. You want things to be black and white. You want them to be right and wrong. But the world is full of grey.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” she asks.

He knows she doesn’t expect an answer, so he doesn’t offer one. They sit in the quiet hall, contemplating the statue.

“I liked the one in Starkhaven better,” she says at last.

It’s a deflection, of course. This is a conversation he suspects they will return to many times. But it’s enough. For now. “Aye,” he says. “Less dour.”

“Indeed,” she agrees, “and with a much smaller sword.”


	6. F is for Food

**F is for Food**

Sebastian is twelve when he runs away for the first time.

He’s made plans before, of course. Every time his Father dismisses him without listening (“Father, _why_ are people hungry in the city? We have too much food and they don’t have enough.” “Father, I overheard the servants talking about the conditions of the elves in the alienage and I think it’s terrible.” “Father, I want to help. I think it’s our _responsibility_ to help.”), every time his brothers torment him, every time his mother looks at him like she wishes he were someone else. This time, though, he decides to go past planning and into action. 

Angus is the one who pushes Sebastian over the edge. In the practice yard, when no one else is around to hear it, he says, “I heard something interesting today. As soon as Grandfather steps down, Father’s thinking of sending you to the Chantry.”

“That’s not true. I’m going to be the—”

“Leader of the militia?” Angus sneers. “You’re _deluding_ yourself if you’re still holding onto that old dream. Connall will do that. The men already look up to him. No, Sebastian. You’ll be the Vael family tithe. The Vaels usually do, you know. Send a child. You know that. Who did you think it was going to be?”

Sebastian doesn’t want to go to the Chantry. More than that, he doesn’t want his brother to be _right_. His stupid brother, who already acts like he’s the ruling prince even though he’s not even next in line (yet), who treats everyone like so much rubbish, who expects his every stupid whim to be acted upon _immediately._ It’s not fair. Sebastian won’t stand for it. He won’t be part of it. So that night he puts some clothes and his pouch of stones and a few other things into a bag, and he follows the plan he’s made. Down the hallway, through the empty library, past the guards chatting as the new pair relieves the old. He sticks to the shadows. He goes through the gardens instead of attempting the main gates, scaling the wall as nimbly as a squirrel. 

It’s not even challenging.

However, once he’s over the wall, standing in the street, he’s not entirely sure where to go. His plan had been to get himself out of the castle. He’s only ever really seen the city from the inside of a carriage, or from atop a horse (and even then only rarely; Mother does like to keep her children close, and she doesn’t approve of riding. _Too dangerous_ , she says, _one might fall_. It drives Sebastian mad; he loves riding. But Mother doesn’t care what he loves.). Fortunately he’s spent a great deal of time poring over maps. From the palace, he makes his way down side streets (better not to push his luck on the main thoroughfares) until he reaches the marketplace. Booths and shops are shuttered for the night, hulking like silent beasts in the moonlight.

He’s hungry. Belatedly, he realizes proper provisions should have been included in his plan. He’s never had to think about food before, not really. He could always send for something. Or go to the kitchens himself; the cooks like him and are always willing to give him treats.

He shakes his head. He hadn’t considered sleeping arrangements, either, come to think of it. Resolute, he finds an alley (one that seems less occupied by rats than the others) and curls up under his cloak, using his bag as a pillow. He doesn’t sleep.

In the morning he realizes another thing: now he’s run away, he can hardly demand food from the merchants on the weight of his name. His bag of stones and his practice bow aren’t much use; he really should have thought to bring _money._ He’s never thought about needing money for things before. He’d have had to steal it, but stealing from Father isn’t the same as stealing from a merchant or a townsperson. Sebastian can’t abide the latter, no matter how hungry he gets no matter how easy it would be to distract someone and lift their purse. (And it would be easy, but those people have done nothing to him.)

For three days Sebastian wanders around Starkhaven, scavenging, thinking about how even the simplest family dinners in the palace always consist of more food than he could possibly eat. Often meals pass where he’s too full even to try all the dishes. He starts daydreaming about food. All the time. And not even delicacies—he’s never been fond of Starkhaven’s signature eel pie, and rich sauces make his stomach hurt more often than not. He dreams of strawberries and pastries and venison stew. He dreams of fresh carrots, and peaches warm from the tree, and the airy confections the kitchen produces on feastdays.

When the searching guards finally find him, he’s too hungry to think about fleeing from them. He’s sitting in his little dark alley, cutting the rot out of a discarded apple with his belt knife, dreaming about a piece of warm bread slathered with butter and honey.

Father assigns him a guard after that.

#

“When the Grand Cleric said I might find you here, I thought she meant you’d be _eating_.”

Sebastian glances toward the door. Hawke leans against the frame, arms crossed over her chest, watching. He continues kneading the dough; he’s nearly done, but it needs more attention before he can let it rest, and he hates doing things by half measures. A few moments later he feels the warmth as Hawke comes up beside him. She’s near enough he can smell the rose and cedar scent of her soap, mixed with scents of the oil she uses to keep her leather armor supple and the resin of her bow. It’s a smell that’s becoming as familiar to him as the smell of Chantry incense or baking bread.

“You cook?”

“I do.”

“Often?”

He chuckles. “You sound surprised.”

“To hear Father tell it, Mother was hardly able to boil water for tea when he first took her away from her servants. Don’t tell her I told you.”

“My parents might have preferred that,” Sebastian admits. “I liked the kitchens. It was always warm, and loud, and the cooks were kind to me. I used to hide there. Unfortunately after the first few times they always knew where to start looking for me.” He draws forth another batch of bread; this is ready to be punched down. Hawke watches with peculiar fascination, her sharp gaze missing nothing. “Cooking was one of the first things I took to, when I came to the Chantry.” On her raised eyebrow, his chuckle turns to a full laugh. “Oh, I didn’t have the first idea what I was _doing_. I daresay I had difficulty enough boiling water in the beginning, too. But I like it. And I kept at it.”

“And now you bake bread.”

“And now I bake bread. And it no longer comes out of the oven like stones made of flour, I’m pleased to say.” He pauses, momentarily shy. “Would you like some?”

“Yes?”

He smiles at the wary uncertainty in her tone and rinses his hands. Then he gathers a fresh-baked loaf, butter, honey, and gestures for her to join him at the table. She closes her eyes when she takes the first bite, and the sound of pleasure she makes deep in her throat brings heat to his cheeks that has nothing whatsoever to do with proximity to the ovens. “Maker’s _balls_ , that’s good,” she whispers with the reverence of a prayer. Then her eyes fly open and she claps one hand to her mouth. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “I forgot.”

“He’s heard worse, I’m sure,” Sebastian remarks lightly, preparing a slice for himself and a second for Hawke. She accepts his offering with a slightly embarrassed smile. He tilts his head at her armor as he eats. “Do you require my aid? Is that why you're here?”

She blinks. “Oh. No. Actually, I, uh… I thought I might offer to help _you_ for a change. I… think… I thought I remembered you usually… isn’t this the day you usually…”

“Bring bread to the needy?” he finishes. She nods. “I must finish baking it first, but aye. And… thank you. For the offer. I’d be glad of your help.”

“My pleasure!” she says, relaxed again. “And I’m not just saying that because of the bread.” She licks the last of the honey and crumbs from her fingers before turning a bright grin his way. “But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t inducement enough to bring me around to help _all the time_ , now that I know.”

“Aye, well,” he agrees with mock solemnity, “the Maker does work in mysterious ways.”

She snorts and reaches for a third slice of bread.


	7. G is for Gold

**G is for Gold**

It is Angus’ wedding day.

Sebastian only knows a little about his brother’s future bride. The painted portrait her family sent shows a beautiful girl with blonde curls and big blue eyes, but portraits can lie. (Sebastian saw the one they had commissioned for Angus. His brother has a much weaker jaw and even at twenty is beginning to lose his hair.) She’s wealthy, of course. Sickeningly wealthy. She has to be: her ties to the nobility _exist_ , but they are weak at best. Sebastian has been learning about these things (there’s power in knowledge). A noble marries for power, money, or to solidify alliances. In this case, given that there is a shortage of girls of appropriate age and appropriate noble birth, Father has decided to augment Starkhaven’s already considerable wealth by selling Angus to the highest bidder.

Sebastian hasn’t been privy to the actual negotiations, of course, but he’s managed to put enough pieces together. A wealthy Antivan merchant whose wife has old ties to Orlesian nobility is willing to spend a _great deal of coin_ to make his only daughter Princess of Starkhaven (eventually). 

In a year or two it will be Connall’s turn. One day Sebastian will be expected to marry a girl he’s never met. That’s how these things work, after all.

Of course, Angus and Connall still torment him mercilessly with the likelihood of being sent to the Chantry instead. “Are you looking forward to meeting _your_ future wife?” Angus jibes. “I hear she’s a real wild one, that Andraste.” Sebastian still thinks he’d rather marry a stranger than be promised to an idea. Perhaps it is only something concocted in Angus’ head. Father has never mentioned it.

Sebastian is too afraid to ask. Hiding from an unpleasant truth is so much easier than facing it head on.

Sebastian’s meant to stand up with his brother, though neither of them really wants this. Things have been uglier between him and Angus since that threat about the Chantry, and ever since the portrait of the beautiful blonde girl arrived, Angus has been insufferable.

But Mother insists. (“Appearances are important,” she says, unable to look Sebastian in the eye.) Sebastian has new clothes for the occasion—the most grown-up clothes he’s ever been permitted. Once this would have made him feel important, but he’s fourteen and they treat him like he’s still four, so he keeps silent.

The embroidery is nice, though. When no one’s looking he runs his fingers over the glinting gold thread, admiring the complicated whorls and patterns.

It’s Connall who carries the rings, and Connall who stands next to Angus, and Connall who Angus looks to for reassurance.

(His eldest brother does look terrified. He looks so terrified Sebastian _almost_ feels bad.)

When it comes time to exchange the rings, Connall can’t find them. He stands at the front of the chantry, all eyes on him, turning out his pockets. Father looks murderous and Mother scandalized. The bride’s parents have the blank, smooth faces of desperate people trying not to show their desperation; they must really want to see their daughter rise.

Angus swears loudly; the curse echoes in the rafters, and his bride gasps behind her veil. (Sebastian still hasn’t actually seen her face, so he can’t compare her actual features to the prettiness of the portrait, although her hair does appear to be as golden as it had been painted.)

After several moments of excitement, and with Connall looking increasingly as though he’s going to faint, Father sends a servant to the vault. The panting page returns a short time later, sweating, carrying two new rings. From where he’s standing, Sebastian can see the girl’s is too big. She has to close her little hand into a fist to keep it in place. Angus’ is too small, and only slides to the first knuckle. He doesn’t swear aloud again, but Sebastian can practically hear the curses he sees behind his brother’s eyes.

Angus hates being embarrassed. And this is _very embarrassing._

After the ceremony’s over, Connall barely makes it to the antechamber before he vomits into a huge vase filled with wedding flowers. Angus’ new (and very pretty; actually the portrait didn’t do her justice) bride looks terribly affronted. Sebastian _does_ feel bad for her.

“Andraste’s blighted _tits_ , Con! What did you _do_ with them?” Angus shouts. (Sebastian’s never heard his brothers argue; something about it makes him perversely happy. For once they’re not ganging up on him.)

Angus’ bride looks even more shocked. She raises one pale hand to cover her mouth, forgetting about the loose ring. It falls to the ground with a tiny clang. Angus doesn’t appear to notice. He’s still shouting at Connall loud enough everyone in the chapel must be able to hear. Sebastian retrieves the girl’s ring and presses it gently into her trembling palm. She blinks at him, her blue eyes full of helpless tears.

Sebastian averts his own eyes, feeling terrible for her. Feeling sorry she’s been caught in the mess.

Feeling even _more_ sorry that a twist of fate and a surplus of wealth has saddled her with the misfortune of now being his brother’s wife.

“I _had_ them, Angus,” Connall insists, very nearly heaving again. His usually-handsome face (far more handsome than Angus’, if truth be told) is blotchy with stress and tears. A string of saliva (or perhaps vomit) hangs from his chin. “I swear I had them.”

Later, after the party, after the eating and dancing and congratulating, Sebastian slides two golden rings from an inner pocket of his new doublet and hides them with the other bits and pieces he’s managed to collect.

Because if Angus is right, and Sebastian _is_ destined for the Chantry as his parents’ tithe or gift or bribe, he won’t stay there long. The rings—and the gold they’re worth—will help see to that.

He still feels bad about the girl, though. But that guilt is a small price to pay for his eventual freedom.

#

Sebastian only hears the intruder because he’s sitting alone in the dark of the chapel. Praying. Thinking. Questioning. Doubting. He hardly knows anymore. The lines blur so often. 

Even so, he almost ignores the sound. The chantry is full of strange noises at all hours.

The clink of coins generally isn’t one of them.

On silent feet, Sebastian rises, following the noise. A shadowy figure bends over the alms-box.

Sebastian clears his throat. The intruder jumps, curses, and drops the coins.

It’s the curse that identifies her.

“Isabela?”

The pirate raises her hands in surrender, fallen coins—gold, silver, copper—at her feet. He looks at them. Then up to her.

“Isabela.”

“It’s not what you think.”

He folds his arms over his chest, feeling strangely naked out of his armor. He doesn’t like to think about how it’s the robes (demoted to those of the affirmed but not the initiated; Elthina will not allow him to re-swear his vows, so he doesn’t feel right donning the robes of a full brother) that feel foreign now, and not his armor. “What is it, then?”

She grimaces. “It’s nothing to do with you. Or even with, you know—” Here the pirate gestures vaguely toward the statue of Andraste. “—her. I… had a little extra.”

“You were putting money _into_ the alms-box?”

“Andraste’s arse! Say it louder.” Again she looks at the statue. If it were anyone else standing before him, he’d have thought her expression _sheepish._ “Sorry. Again.”

Sebastian glances again at the coins glittering in the dim light. “Isabela,” he repeats, “that’s more than a little.”

It is, if he’s not mistaken, most of the pirate’s share from their last expedition with Hawke. Isabela tosses her hair over one shoulder and glares at him as though he’d accused her of theft instead of generosity. “You breathe a word of this, Princess—one word, to _anyone_ —and you’ll wake up a eunuch on a slaver’s block in Minrathous.”

He has the distinct feeling she’ll kill him if he smiles, so he doesn’t. “We both know you won’t do that. You disapprove of slavers.”

“In this case I’ll make an exception. One word, Vael.” She pokes him right in the center of his chest, hard enough to leave a lingering ache.

Isabela takes three brisk steps away from him before turning back, brow furrowed. “Look,” she says, “I know it comes part and parcel with a load of sanctimonious bullshit, but I’m not blind, and I’m not stupid. I put money in the hands of those children in Darktown and some bully bigger and meaner than them walks away with it before the coins hit the bottoms of their pockets. I put it in this blighted box and I know you’re putting it to good use. Feeding widows and taking care of orphans, right? That’s what you do?”

Sebastian nods, saying nothing.

“I make more than I need, working with Hawke.”

Again he nods.

“And what I do with that extra is my business. And mine alone.”

“I won’t say anything, Isabela.”

“Good,” she says, cocking one hip and glaring down at the fallen coins as though they’ve offended her. “You bloody-well make sure that goes where it needs to.”

“I always do.”

She stares at him for a long moment, her eyes shining and inscrutable in the dark. Then, without another word, she swaggers away, as if he, and not she, were the interloper. He does smile then, as he kneels and gathers the coins.

He’ll be able to feed twice the usual number this month.

True to his vow (this one far easier to keep, much as he’d like to see Isabela’s generosity acknowledged) he never breathes a word. After a while, Isabela skips the alms-box altogether, slipping her donations directly to him.

No wonder, then, it’s taking her so long to gather funds for a new ship, he thinks. Yet haul after haul, job after job, quest after quest, she drops gold coins into his palms and calls them _extra._


	8. H is for Helpless

**H is for Helpless**

His grandfather is dying.

No one says the words, but Sebastian knows. 

It’s obvious to anyone who pays attention.

It’s been happening for a long time. A year, perhaps. First Grandfather stopped coming to dinners, to balls, totournaments. Then he stopped attending every court. He stopped going to his office every day. 

But when Grandfather stops coming to see Sebastian once a week in the practice yard, he knows for certain.

Ever since Grandfather made his promise (two years ago, now, when Sebastian was thirteen) that one day, when Sebastian was strong enough to pull the string of the Starkhaven longbow it would be his (and surely, Sebastian thinks, Grandfather wouldn’t give such a precious prize to a grandson intended for priesthood), he has made a point of coming once a week to see Sebastian practice, no matter how busy he is, no matter what other responsibilities he has.

“Good, lad,” he always says. “You’re learning.”

Nothing more, nothing less.

_Good, lad._

A week passes, then two, then a month, and Sebastian can no longer put his Grandfather’s continued absence down to workload. Father deals with most of the paperwork now. Father sees the visiting diplomats. Father goes to Grandfather’s office every day. Father may not be Prince yet, but he’s already leading Starkhaven.

It can only mean one thing.

His Grandfather is sitting in a chair pretending to read a book. Sebastian watches for a few moments. He knows his grandfather is pretending because he never once turns a page.

“Forgive me for not coming to see you these past weeks, lad,” Grandfather finally says, without turning his head. (Sebastian had entered quietly, but it’s hard to pull the wool over Grandfather’s eyes.) “I’ve missed you.”

“Are you dying, Grandfather?”

Grandfather chuckles, waving one thin hand (when did his hands, those strong archer’s hands, get so _thin_?) toward the seat next to him. Sitting so close, Sebastian can see it’s not only Grandfather’s hands that have grown thin. Under his dressing gown his shoulders are so much narrower, and the papery skin of his cheeks is slack. Dark circles bruise the skin beneath his grandfather’s eyes. Even those eyes look different now, the Vael-blue gone rheumy and clouded. Sebastian has the strangest feeling his grandfather’s eyes now see things Sebastian himself cannot.

“Not much gets past you, does it, lad?” Grandfather shakes his head. “If only Lachlan… but no. My son chooses to see all the things you aren’t, and none of the things you are. It was always his flaw. I am sorry for it. For your sake. For his. I see you, lad. And I see myself. Lachlan’s cut from a different cloth.”

Sebastian doesn’t want to speak ill of his father, and he doesn’t know what to say. His grandfather has never spoken to him this way before. He is spared the necessity of finding words when his grandfather begins to cough. He’s never heard anything like it before. It’s deep and ugly and stains his grandfather’s trembling lips with flecks of red.

Sebastian’s on his feet in an instant. “I’ll send for someone—”

Grandfather’s hand clenches hard around Sebastian’s wrist. The hands may be thin, they may tremble, but they are still strong. Strong enough. “No, lad. Sit. Sit and talk with me a while. This will pass. It has passed. One day, perhaps, but not today. There’s nothing to be done, and they’ll only fuss.”

“Grandfather…”

“Aye, lad, to answer your question. I’m dying. But then, so are we all. We can never know.” He smiles a strange, sad, secret little smile. “I was never meant to be Prince. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“I don’t understand, Grandfather.”

“I was the youngest son. Youngest of three, like you, though I had younger sisters. My eldest brother died young. Riding accident. The burden of leadership fell to the middle son, Alec. He’d have made a good prince, I think. I didn’t even consider the role I’d have to play—to own the truth, I was thinking of dedicating myself to the Chantry. It would have suited me. My brother was married, after all, and had two sons of his own. A long line of heirs ahead of me. Until the whole family was taken by illness on a diplomatic excursion to Antiva. They wanted the lads to see the world. They’d never been outside Starkhaven. They died, lad. All of them. And suddenly I was Prince. I, the youngest brother, who’d never thought about leadership a single day in his life.”

“I… I didn’t know, Grandfather.”

His grandfather reaches out, pats Sebastian on the back of the hand. They both pretend not to notice the tiny smear of blood his fingers leave in their wake. “Let it be a lesson, lad. Soon as a man thinks he knows the Maker’s plan, it’s liable to change. We know so little. And even that little can change in a moment, a heartbeat. I know you’re good at listening, Sebastian. But don’t forget to _hear._ ”

Sebastian entwines his fingers with his grandfather’s, feeling the frailty of the bones beneath the age-spotted skin.

He feels like the strong one. Perhaps for the first time.

And it doesn’t matter. Because his grandfather is dying, and there’s nothing, nothing he can do to stop it.

#

Two weeks after Hawke’s mother is killed—is _murdered_ —Sebastian looks up from his work and finds her glaring at him. He recognizes the expression. She is a mirror, a mirror to the man he was when he found out about his own family (only worse, he thinks, only so much worse, because she was not estranged from her mother, and oh the pain in her _burns_ ).

“Explain it to me,” she says, her voice so bitter and hard he wouldn’t have recognized it had he not been looking at her face as she spoke. “Tell me why.”

“Hawke…”

“No!” she shouts, crossing the distance between them in three swift strides, just barely pulling herself short before crashing into him. He can hear the ragged pull of breath to breath. Her hair hangs lank around her face, unwashed. She doesn’t smell of rose and cedar. Her eyes are full of shadows. Closing her hand into a fist she brings it up and hits him once on the chest, hard. He takes the blow. It’s a small pain compared to hers. “ _No!_ Tell me. Tell me why. Explain it. I need you to _explain it_.”

He can’t.

He has platitudes and quotations and prayers. Meaningless words. He’s helpless before her grief.

She hits him again, but this time doesn’t pull her fist back again. Opening her hand, she rests her palm against his heart and bows her head over her outstretched arm. “It’s not fair,” she whispers. “It’s not fair. Sebastian, how? How do you believe in someone—something—who lets things like this happen?”

_We know so little._

Sometimes he doesn’t know.

“Hawke—”

“No,” she pleads, and he hears the tears in her voice even though her eyes are downcast. The heat is gone, replaced by despair. Despair is far more frightening. “Don’t say anything. You don’t need to say anything. I know. I’m just… I just…”

“I know,” he whispers, because he does. When she wraps her arms around him tightly—tightly enough to hurt—he lets her. He doesn’t tell her he’s sorry. He doesn’t tell her it will get better, grow easier to bear. He lets her cry until she has no more tears, until she’s leaning against him with her face pressed into his damp tunic, hardly able to hold herself up, her breath hitching a sob on every inhale.

It’s not enough.

It’s all he has.


	9. I is for Idleness

**I is for Idleness**

Sebastian’s days all look the same. He loses track sometimes.

It’s embarrassing.

Had he been born to different parents, into a different life, he might already be _something_. A soldier, an apprentice, a farmer. Maker, some village lads are already on the eve of marriage as they approach their sixteenth birthdays. He might have _occupation_.

Some days Sebastian thinks he would give anything—everything—just to feel _useful._

But Sebastian _never_ feels useful. Oh, he knows he’s a fair shot with a bow and getting better, but he’s given no responsibilities and no challenges. He stops going to his father with suggestions (and he _has_ suggestions; Starkhaven has any number of resources Sebastian thinks ought to be used more sensibly), because his father never listens. (Angus is Father’s right hand now, indispensable, and Angus doesn’t simply _ignore_ Sebastian; he is openly contemptuous.)

Most days Sebastian spends the mornings in the practice yard and the afternoons in either the library (the one place his brothers do not follow, as if the very presence of books might taint them somehow) or sitting at his grandfather’s bedside.

Sometimes Grandfather does nothing but weep. He cries until he coughs, and then cries because he coughs. Other times, Grandfather _rages_. It is a side Sebastian has seen but rarely (and usually only directed at slavers who dared scrabble for a toehold in Starkhaven, or foolish nobles caught scheming when that scheming might have ended in death), and it is _terrifying_. His grandfather calls him Alec most days, now, and talks of people Sebastian has never known.

This is how Sebastian comes to learn his grandfather is a man filled with regrets.

It breaks his heart, really, watching the man he knew—the strong man, the wise man, the _great_ man—fade into a shadow of his former self, weeping and ranting and screaming at the heavens.

But still Sebastian comes back, day after day.

He tells himself it’s because his grandfather needs him (he doesn’t. He needs servants to clean and dress and feed him. Perhaps he needs Alec, who can no longer answer him). He tells himself he’s doing some good, he’s _useful_. If only to pretend, for his grandfather’s sake, to be that long-dead brother.

But if truth be told, Sebastian has nothing else to do, and nowhere else to go.

#

Sebastian hasn’t seen Hawke in weeks.

He hasn’t seen Hawke in three weeks and six days, to be precise.

He hasn’t seen Hawke since she sobbed herself into silence in his arms. He hasn’t seen her since she walked away, holding herself together like a thing broken beyond repair, all cracks and mismatched shards and hollow spaces no condolence could possibly fill.

He hasn’t seen her since he let her walk away and didn’t go after her.

She doesn’t come to the chantry. He doesn’t see her at services, though she has often attended before (and he looks, oh, he looks).

At first he thinks she’s merely away—the Wounded Coast, Sundermount—on some expedition she’d decided he wouldn’t like or wasn’t right for. It’s possible. She needs only so many archers, after all.

He waits a week—an agonizing eternity of a week—before he seeks her out. Bodahn doesn’t meet Sebastian’s eyes when he says she isn’t home, and Sebastian doesn’t press him. He is disturbed, however, when he receives the same shifty evasion from Varric. He and the dwarf do not always see eye to eye, but they both care about Hawke.

“Look, Choir Boy,” Varric says, “you might want to…”

Sebastian is forced to ask, “What?” when Varric’s silence goes on too long.

The dwarf sighs heavily. “Find something else to do for a little while.”

These words sting, but Sebastian does _try_. He fills his days with chores no one else wishes to do: scrubbing floors in rarely-used chantry storage rooms, melting down the ends of candlesticks to make new candles, reorganizing entire sections of library. Even the Grand Cleric seems surprised to see him so often haunting her halls, and she sends him on errands—silly errands, unnecessary errands—just, he thinks, to get him out from under her feet.

On one such errand, he finds himself in Darktown. He hasn’t set foot inside Anders’ grubby little clinic since the night the pregnant woman died, even though he’s been back to Darktown countless times. He doesn’t particularly want to enter now, but…

But he cares about Hawke, and perhaps Anders knows where she’s disappeared to.

(He tells himself it won’t hurt if he walks in the clinic and finds the mage gone, off wherever Hawke is. It’s a lie. He’s a good liar, even when it’s only to himself. It is a skill that cannot be unlearned once it’s been acquired, lying.)

Anders isn’t gone, though. He’s got half a dozen patients on makeshift cots, and another half a dozen sitting or sprawling on any other surface that will hold them. There’s a great deal of moaning, and a great deal of blood. The mage glances up, already frowning, and the expression only grows darker when he sees Sebastian.

“Not today,” the mage says. “Not with this lot to take care of. Tell her to—”

“Hawke didn’t send me,” Sebastian says. “What happened here?”

For a moment, Sebastian thinks Anders won’t answer. The mage’s hands begin to glow, and the little boy on the cot ceases his pitiful moans. When the healing is done, Anders glances up and, evidently surprised at seeing Sebastian still present, explains, “Every day is like this, give or take. Don’t look so surprised. This is bloody Kirkwall, isn’t it?” 

Anders looks exhausted already as he pushes one hand (trembling, Sebastian notes) through his unkempt hair. He wonders how long the mage has been at it. He wonders how long it will go on.

“Let me help,” Sebastian says.

Truthfully, he feels almost as surprised at his own offer as Anders looks. With a wry smile, the mage says, “I’d give my left hand for a lyrium potion, but I suppose you’ll have to do.”

Flipping open one of the pouches at his waist, Sebastian hands over a vial filled with blue liquid. Anders arches an eyebrow, but wastes no time in drinking it down. “I won’t ask,” the mage says, almost amused. As amused as anyone could sound when looking at hours of hard work ahead of them, Sebastian supposed.

“You can’t use magic on them all,” Sebastian says. “I only had the one potion. I’ll take care of the minor injuries. You focus on the major ones.”

Anders doesn’t argue. Sebastian thinks it’s a sign of just how ragged the man’s been run. They work in silence, exchanging only necessary words— _where are your bandages? Do you have more poultice? Would one of these potions help?_ —until the clinic is once again empty and silent.

The ghost of the pregnant woman Anders could not save still hangs between them. Sebastian wonders if the mage senses it as clearly as he does.

“Why did you come, if it wasn’t because Hawke sent you?” Anders asks, later, when they are slumped together side by side, exhausted and blood-spattered and as filthy as the floor they sit on. 

Sebastian tears himself away from thoughts of cleaning (and Maker, if any place needs to be cleaned, it’s this one) to reply, “I… I was worried about Hawke.”

Anders laughs, but it is an unpleasant sound. Bitter. Pained. “And you thought I might know something?” Flipping his hands over, Anders stares down into his palms. “You… you weren’t there. You didn’t see what that bastard did. No one deserves… and it was her _mother_.”

Anders shudders, and Sebastian delves into his belt-pouches again, this time drawing out a small flask. He offers it to the mage. Arching an eyebrow, Anders takes it and sniffs. “I remember drunkenness,” Anders says, a faint note of longing in his tired tone. “There are times… no matter.” He sips, almost delicately, and smiles as he swallows. “Well, that’s better than the swill I remember, in any case, even if it won’t do what it’s supposed to.”

Sebastian takes a drink, too, though his is not a sip. It has been a long day, but no one has died. No one has died, and he’s sitting on a dirt floor next to someone who hates him (or at least who dislikes him very much), but it’s been a day of truces.

It’s been a day of feeling useful in a way scrubbing chantry floors and making new chantry candles _isn’t_. It is more like the usefulness he feels when Hawke appears (always suddenly, always out of nowhere) and says, "Sebastian, I was wondering..."

He misses that usefulness. More than he can say.

Even though it's only been three weeks and six days.

“She’s not away from Kirkwall,” Sebastian says. He means it to be a question, but in the end his tone falls flat, and it’s merely a statement.

“A mage killed her mother and the Maker let it happen,” Anders says, accepting the flask again. “It wasn’t me and it wasn’t you, but for now… for now we’re the closest thing. She needs someone to blame. She… she needs something to hate.”

Sebastian nods, thinking of the way his grandfather had cried out, the way his grandfather had spoken all the words to Sebastian he’d never had the chance to speak to his brother. (When his grandfather had said, “Alec, how could you do that to me?” Sebastian had replied, “I’m sorry, brother. I’m sorry.” And somehow he’d still felt _bad_ , as if he _had_ done something to earn his grandfather’s ire.)

“She’ll come around,” Anders adds.

Except _his_ inflection rises, just slightly, and Sebastian wonders just what the answer to that question is.

He's afraid he doesn't want to know.


	10. J is for Jealousy

**J is for Jealousy**

“No,” Connall says. “I won’t.”

Sebastian flinches. He can’t help it. No one says _no_ to Father. Not even Angus says no to Father, and Connall is only Angus’ right hand, his shadow. The spare. Still important until Angus provides an heir. (Rumor amongst the servants says this development may be imminent, but nothing has been announced, and Aurelia looks as slender as ever. She also, at the moment, looks scandalized at Connall’s outburst. Angus’ wife often looks scandalized, Sebastian has come to realize. Disdain steals a great deal of her beauty.)

Truth be told, Sebastian doesn’t think he’s ever heard his brother express an opinion before. Certainly not a contradictory one. Certainly not during a court dinner, with an audience. And certainly not about any topic as sensitive as parental decisions concerning choice of bride.

“This is not a negotiation, Connall,” Father says, heavy eyebrows looking even angrier than usual. Sebastian bows his head, concentrating on his meal. The pheasant is suddenly fascinating; he can’t _possibly_ tear his attention away from the roasted potatoes.

“Father, I _won’t_.”

Sebastian holds his breath, waiting. He wishes he were sitting farther away. He wishes he were in a different room altogether. But no blow falls, and no shout erupts. He permits himself a slantwise glance in his brother’s direction, his father’s direction, and sees the latter half-risen from the table. Mother’s hand rests on Father’s wrist. Not holding, not gripping; even she will not dare _that_. Just touching.

“Connall,” she says, her soft voice somehow more frightening than Father’s stormy brow, more commanding than the retort Sebastian can see pooling on his father’s lips, “this behavior is beneath you. Leave at once.”

“Mother—”

“ _At once._ ”

Connall stands, as jerky as a puppet directed by unskilled hands, and goes.

The next day, his brother’s engagement is announced. Connall’s to marry the daughter of a nobleman from Ansburg, ostensibly to shore up a tentative land-claim, but mostly to soothe hurt feelings. (The same daughter had been looked over when his parents were shopping for Angus’ bride. The girl’s family has been muttering angrily since, to anyone who’ll listen.)

Sebastian understands his brother’s reluctance, then. Connall’s not good at hiding his emotions (he’s never had to). His brother is in love. And not with the girl from Ansburg.

“Tell me how you did it.”

Sebastian looks up from his book, startled at the interruption. No one ever interrupts him in the library. 

Connall throws himself into the seat opposite, more distressed and disheveled than Sebastian’s ever seen him. His broad shoulders are hunched and his hands tremble before he clenches them around the arms of the chair. 

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Quit it, Sebastian!” Connall snaps. Then he shakes himself and takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to play one of your twisty little word games. Not now. Not with so much at stake. Be superior later, if you must. This is more important. You ran away. You know how to get out. How? How did you do it?”

Sebastian shrugs, uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”

It’s a lie. He hasn’t run away since the first time, but he could, if he wanted. The guards have grown lazy. The palace sticks to its predictable routines. He has a hidden box filled with coins and trinkets and two golden rings. The next time he runs, he’ll be prepared. He won’t be stupid.

Connall utters a brief cry, burying his face in his hands. Glancing around, Sebastian looks to see if they have an audience. The library is quiet, empty, much the same as it is every day. He doesn’t reach out to his brother, doesn’t offer him comfort. He does close his book. 

“I know she’s too young. But… she cares for me. I think. And I care for her.”

“Flora Harimann?” Sebastian asks, keeping his own tone carefully light, carefully neutral. (He is much better at hiding his emotions than his brother is. He always has been.)

The question—the mention of her name—is enough to make Connall look up again. His eyes are wild. “How did you—of course. You know everything, don’t you? Always bloody _watching_.”

The venom in his brother’s voice startles Sebastian. Then the anger fades, leaving only the same distress, the same hopelessness. “She’s sixteen. We… we could have a long engagement. It’s a good match. It’s a _proper_ match. And they won’t listen.”

“They never do,” Sebastian replies.

Connall looks at him, _really looks at him_ , for perhaps the first time in all their lives together. “You don’t know how lucky you are, Sebastian,” his brother says softly. “You don’t have any idea how _lucky_ you are.”

Sebastian blinks, and finds he has no words. He’s never considered himself an object of _jealousy_ before, but jealousy is the emotion in his brother’s eyes, and it’s the fuel behind the animosity in is brother’s tone. It’s so ridiculous Sebastian has to bite his tongue to keep from laughing.

Connall continues, oblivious, “Too much of the wrong attention is worse than being ignored. Look at you, doing whatever you damned-well please. Swanning about without a care. No one breathing down your neck or watching your every move or planning out the rest of your bloody life.”

“Yet,” Sebastian manages.

“Maybe,” Connall says. “Maybe. Until then, you can’t convince me I wouldn’t rather be in your shoes, little brother. Nothing you say could convince me of that. You’re _invisible_. You have no idea what that’s worth.” Connall shudders, his knuckles white, his breathing audible. “What am I going to do, Sebastian? What am I going to _do_?”

Sebastian gazes over his brother’s shoulder, thinking of the unknown lady from Ansburg, thinking of Flora Harimann and her pretty smile. “You know running away isn’t going to make it any likelier they’ll let you snub the girl from Ansburg in favor of Flora. I don’t think you’re going to defy our parents, Connall. You might want to, but I don’t think you will.”

Connall turns pale, hideously pale, beneath his tan. “You’re a right bastard, Sebastian.”

“So are you, Connall,” Sebastian replies, leaning forward on his elbows. “But I’ll tell you how to run, if you want me to.” 

#

Sebastian is jealous.

The feeling upsets him, sickens him even, because he has no claim on her. He knows he has no claim on her. He _can have no_ claim on her. 

Hawke invites him to cards (a step toward some kind of reconciliation, he thought at the time; she has been so distant) but sits at the far end of the table, with Fenris. She still looks brittle, broken, pasted together wrong. The cracks show. She’s too thin, and the skin beneath her eyes too dark. He can’t help noticing these things, but he hasn’t the first idea what to do about them. How to help.

He doesn’t hear what she says, but it coaxes a brief (rare) smile from the elf, and Sebastian is forced to look away, to stare at his cards until the symbols blur and make no sense.

He knows he can have no claim on her. 

_I will take no bride but Andraste._

At Sebastian’s left, Varric leans heavily on one elbow, eyebrows raised. “Good thing you’re not a mage.”

Sebastian makes a noncommittal noise under his breath. The words are nonsense. He sees no sense dignifying them with an answer.

“You’d have already set the whole hand on fire with the power of your burning… what is it? Envy? Anger? _Frustration_?” Varric chuckles, shifting the cards in his own hand. “See what I did there? _Burning_.”

“It’s a poor hand,” Sebastian mutters.

“You’ll win this one if Broody’s not hiding some ace up his sleeve. You know. Figuratively.”

Sebastian likes Fenris. On good days, he almost considers the elf a friend.

Today is not a particularly good day.

“You mistake me,” Sebastian replies, turning his cards face down and pushing them toward the center of the table.

“I don’t think I do,” Varric says. “If _I’m_ not mistaken, you just threw away a winning hand.”

“You mistake me,” Sebastian repeats. At the far end of the table, Hawke leans toward Fenris, nudging the elf with her elbow. Fenris scowls and hides his cards from her prying eyes. She laughs.

It’s the first Sebastian’s heard her laugh in nearly two months.

Varric only shakes his head and throws down another coin, raising the stakes.


	11. K is for Kiss

**K is for Kiss**

It is Connall’s wedding day.

This time (to the Void with appearances) Connall stands alone at the front of the chantry. (Almost alone: a guard is within easy reach. Insurance.) The Revered Mother performing the ceremony already has the rings in her pocket.

On what is meant to be a happy occasion, Sebastian has never seen his brother look worse. Still, for all his attempts at escape (three; all failures. Connall doesn’t have Sebastian’s light tread or ease with shadows), Connall does now stand at the front of the chantry, broad shoulders hunched, dark head bowed. Words are spoken. A brief kiss is exchanged. It is done. Sebastian tries to catch his brother’s eye afterward, but Connall’s gaze is elsewhere, turned inward.

His brother looks broken.

And he does as he’s told.

Sebastian isn’t certain if luck or design finds him seated next to Flora Harimann at dinner. He and Flora are of an age (she’s eight months older; a fact she loves to taunt him with) and their mothers have been friends all their lives. Sebastian supposes things must have been worse off with the Ansburg nobility than he realized, because otherwise Connall is right: it would have been a proper match.

Perhaps Mother’s wishes were merely overruled. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Flora doesn’t wear the same broken sorrow as Connall. In fact, apart from partaking rather heavily of the constant supply of wine, she seems cheerful. She regales Sebastian with stories of her little brothers (deemed too young to attend the festivities) and Kirkwall and her journey. Every once in a while, when he makes her laugh or captures her attention, she leans close and touches the back of his hand or his forearm or, once, his cheek. The graze of her fingers against his skin is always brief, so brief he thinks he must be imagining it, so brief he almost puts the contact down to mistakes.

But she keeps doing it. And she keeps smiling.

“Sebastian,” she whispers, once the dancing has started and no one is paying attention to anything except their partners. “Let’s go.”

He doesn’t ask where. He doesn’t particularly care. Wine and attention have made him daring. He couldn’t have said which has contributed more to the heady feeling of inebriation.

She takes his hand as he guides her from the hall. It is easy to slip past the dancers. It is easy to avoid the unwanted attention of their parents. Even Sebastian’s personal guards have been lulled by the festive atmosphere. (Sebastian thinks about how easy it would be to flee. To take his gold and his provisions and go. But Flora Harimann’s hand is in his hand, and she’s giggling as she follows him down disused servants’ passages and through empty storerooms, and he finds he doesn’t particularly _want_ to go anywhere else. For a change.)

He takes her to the gardens, following the darkened paths to a spot he knows well. It’s hard enough to find in the daylight, but his steps are sure, and he’s certain they won’t be followed, won’t be discovered. Behind him, she gasps when they step into the secluded little clearing. Moonlight turns the leaves of the willow silvery, and he pushes back the heavy fronds, guiding her into the space behind the branches. He spreads his cloak on the ground, and Flora holds up the wine bottle she’s been carrying in her other hand.

“This is a much nicer party,” she says, though she sounds almost nervous as she speaks the words.

Sebastian speaks before he thinks, saying, “I wouldn’t have thought so. I know you and my brother—”

Flora laughs a soft, sad laugh. “Connall—and my mother—were more enamored of the idea than I, Sebastian. You must know that. Your brother is… nice. Dependable. Solid.” She is standing very, very close to him, her face tilted up (and Maker, he’s _grown_ since her last visit; she used to be the taller one). She reaches out, resting one hand flat against his chest. His breath catches. “He’s not you.”

He’s thinking _but why does_ that _matter?_ when she rises onto her toes and closes the last of the very small distance between them. Then he stops thinking altogether. It’s better than wine. It’s better than climbing to the top of the palace’s tallest tower with no one the wiser. It’s better than hitting a tiny target at fifty paces.

He doesn’t have the first idea what he’s doing, but this? This, he thinks, as he pulls her closer and parts his lips at the insistence of her tongue, seems a thing worth _learning_.

#

For such a strong woman, so much about her is soft. Her hair, as he runs his fingers through it. Her lips, as they open to his. The curve of her breast beneath his palm. Sometimes, in Varric’s stories, Sebastian comes across phrases like _her skin was soft as silk_. Or velvet. But Sebastian knows silk, and he knows velvet, and Hawke’s skin is softer still. Even her moans, the soft sighs of desire, are soft.

Soft sighs are a challenge; they are only the barest precursor to the sounds he wants to draw from her. She groans her disappointment as he pulls away from their kiss, insistent hands tangling in his hair, angling for purchase. He smiles against the curve of her cheek before kissing her temple, her cheekbone, the sensitive juncture of jaw and throat.

And oh, this pulls a hoarser cry from her lips even as she pulls him nearer, nearer—

“Sebastian.”

He pauses, concerned. Hawke blinks at him, dazed, lips still parted in a lazy, satiated smile, but her voice is hard, troubled.

“Sebastian. Wake up.”

He does. To find Hawke standing beside his bed—his narrow little cot in his narrow little room in the chantry. She’s spattered with blood (his heart lurches before he realizes it isn’t hers), and her expression (far from amorous now, and oh how his stomach twists with the shame of dreams he cannot control) is some terrible blend of rage and sorrow.

“Saemus Dumar is dead,” she says woodenly, hollowly. “Petrice is dead. I think you ought to go to the Grand Cleric.”

“What— _Maker_ , Hawke. What happened?”

She shakes her head, weary. So weary. “I think we’ve gotten mixed up in a war, Sebastian. And I haven’t the first idea what I’m going to do about it.”


	12. L is for Loss

**L is for Loss**

The day Sebastian draws his bow, aims, and fires an arrow through the eyeslit of a helmet from the top of the ramparts is the day Guardsman Elias approaches, his face drawn, his brow furrowed, and says, “I’m afraid it’s time, Your Highness.”

Sebastian’s bow drops from numb fingers, clattering against the stones. His feet move before he tells them what to do. He doesn’t cry. He’s shed so many tears already (always alone, always in the dark safety of his own chambers, always swift and sudden and overpowering), and now the time has come, he finds himself feeling oddly hollow, oddly distant.

Grandfather’s servants are in the hall, arms around each other, heads together, already weeping. Sebastian nods a brief greeting (they do not see it) before silently entering the chamber. The room feels different. Emptier.

He knows then his grandfather is already gone.

Father sits at Grandfather’s bedside, his head in his hands, and Sebastian pauses in the doorway.

It is the first time he has ever seen his father cry.

#

Sebastian thinks he’s hearing things when Fenris utters the words _she now has the right to challenge you._

The Arishok’s gravelly voice saying, “What say you, Hawke? Do you agree to a duel?” sounds like a death sentence. Standing at her right hand, Sebastian is close enough to see the moment of hesitation in her eyes before she lifts her chin, straightens her shoulders, and agrees. Her voice doesn’t waver. 

He and Aveline share a glance, and he sees his own horror reflected back at him. Aveline knows. Aveline _knows._ Hawke is capable. Hawke is smart and brave and quick.

But Hawke is an _archer_.

Archers don’t _duel._

“Fenris,” Sebastian hisses as the crowd parts. “What have you done?”

The elf is hard to read at the best of times, but Sebastian doesn’t miss the flash of sorrow—of fear, even—that crosses Fenris’ face. “She will triumph.”

Sebastian’s reply is stolen by the commencement of the fight. It pains him to watch. Hawke, slim and lithe, darts around the heavier giant, dodging his double blades. She is a swift runner, but cannot evade him entirely. He barrels over her, and when she pulls herself upright once again, Sebastian can see her wavering. He wants nothing more than to pull his own bow from his back, consequences be damned, and lend aid. Fenris reaches out, gripping Sebastian’s arm tightly. “No,” he says softly, as though any words of his could possibly be heard over the Arishok’s battle cry. “All Kirkwall will be destroyed if you interfere. This is a battle of honor. You must let it be.”

Arrow after arrow flies true, and yet the Arishok battles on, heedless. If her missiles cause him pain, he shows none of it. Threads of blood course down his grey skin, but still he roars and charges. Hawke employs every trick she knows, every trick Sebastian would use in her place, and still he can see her flagging. She buys herself a moment to drink down potions—health, stamina, both; he isn’t certain—and Sebastian can hear the ragged pull of her breath, can see the sweat coursing down her face and the trembling of her hands as she pulls the cork from the vial. Then she’s off again.

Everyone in the room watches, rapt, as Hawke attempts to outrun death. It is like watching an execution in slow motion. Aveline is pale beneath her freckles. Fenris glares, as if glaring might someone slow the Arishok down, might lessen the strength of his blows.

Sebastian prays.

His prayers are desperate, broken, half-formed. He doesn’t close his eyes. He doesn’t bow his head. His eyes never leave Hawke’s nimble figure. She’s growing weary, and he prays for her strength. She’s down to half a dozen arrows, and he prays for each to find a mortal mark.

One mistake. She twists left instead of right. Beside him, Aveline grunts as though she’s the one who’s been hit. Fenris’ markings flash bright.

Hawke, Hawke who always fights as silently as a shadow, _screams._

Sebastian wishes he could look away, but he cannot. The Arishok’s blade has caught her, and as he watches, beyond horrified, the giant heaves Hawke over his head.

The scream goes on and on; Sebastian knows it will haunt him forever, no matter what the final outcome of the battle. He has never heard pain like it. That it is Hawke making the sound only hurts more. His bow is in his hand. He’s reaching for an arrow, and to the Void with Fenris’ warning. Aveline’s already drawn her blade.

Hawke goes silent. Sebastian still hears the echo of her cry in his head. She has slid the length of the Arishok’s blade; she’s eye to eye with him. The hilt of his blade stops her from falling any further. It is the only thing.

And somehow, somehow she finds the strength to draw the knife from her belt. Her hands scrabble for purchase. The hilt slips. Then the knife is in her hand. Then her knife is in his chest. Blood sprays. The Arishok’s expression turns surprised. Sebastian has never seen surprise on a kossith’s face before.

The Arishok falls to his knees. Then over. Motionless.

_To the death._

Hawke grimaces and pulls herself free of the blade, one arm held tight to her midsection as she rises. She is covered in blood, and Sebastian is certain only a little of it belongs to the dead Arishok. Sebastian is vaguely aware of the Knight-Commander’s entrance, her reluctant words of gratitude. Then he is at Hawke’s side. Everything else secondary, everything else _forgotten_. 

“Sebastian,” she says, her voice hardly louder than a breath and still rough from the scream the Arishok had torn from her. Her eyes never leave the Knight-Commander’s figure. Meredith stands over the discarded head of Viscount Dumar, shoulders hunched. Nobles mill about, crying, shaking, screaming. Aveline is attempting to restore order. Fenris is at Hawke’s other side, but it is Sebastian’s forearm she grips. Her hand is weak. Her pale skin is a sickly shade under the blood and sweat. “Sebastian, I have to walk out of this room under my own power, or I’ll undo everything I’ve just done. Fenris. Get Anders. There’s— _shit_ , oh Maker—there’s a passage. My cellar. To the clinic. Use it.”

Fenris is gone a moment later, and it’s indicative of how badly Hawke is injured (how can she be upright? How can she be _walking_?) he does not argue with her request.

When Sebastian looks down and sees a red hand-print on white enamel, he knows things are very wrong. Still, she walks. He stays close to her, ready to catch her if she falls.

Sebastian remembers a dead woman and her dead baby and hopes it is not already too late.

The moment they are through the doors of the great hall—to the Void with milling servants and traumatized nobility; to the Void with the Knight-Commander’s templars and Aveline’s guards—Sebastian lifts Hawke as gently as he can. Still, she groans, turning her face. He makes the mistake of glancing at the wound, and immediately silences the voice in his head that says _it’s too much, it’s too late, she’ll never survive this_ because she’s _Hawke_ and she’s just been named _Champion of Kirkwall_ , and she’s a bloody _archer_ who beat the Arishok in a single-combat duel to the death.

One death. The Arishok’s. Not hers. Hers is not allowed. Hers cannot happen. Sebastian will not let it happen. She is going to survive. She has to. She _has_ to.

He heads for her estate as fast as he can, trying to strike the precarious balance between speed and not jostling her, not making things worse. She is no longer quite awake, her eyes shut and head lolling against him, but she still moans every time he moves. Weak, whimpering cries, but they are cries. 

The pregnant woman had whimpered, too, when she no longer had the strength for screaming. As long as Hawke’s not silent. As long as she’s not _still._

Every step becomes a prayer. A broken litany, each step a plea. Mostly he just begs as he’s never begged before. (Nothing beautiful about these prayers. Nothing proper. No ritual, no grace. Just _please, please, please, Maker, please don’t take her, please_ and he’s never uttered anything more heartfelt in all his life.)

When she stops making any sound at all, he runs.

Hawke’s mabari _howls_ when Sebastian opens the door to her estate, a horrible counterpoint to the cry Sebastian still hears ringing in his head. “The healer’s on his way,” Sebastian manages to spit out, his breath labored. “Her room?”

The dwarf asks questions—Sebastian sees his lips moving—but he can’t answer. He stumbles up the stairs, blindly following Bodahn’s footsteps. In Hawke’s room, he sets her on her bed as gently as he can, but she moans.

She _moans._ Sebastian touches her cheek, sinking down to his knees beside her bed. Her entire torso is a mess of blood (and worse; _don’t look, Sebastian, don’t look. Anders will be here soon. Anders will be here—Anders will know what to do. Anders won’t let her—he won’t fail. This time he won’t fail._ )

“Andraste’s arse. _Andraste’s arse._ ”

“Help her,” Sebastian pleads. “You have to help her.”

Anders looks stricken; Sebastian knows he is remembering the dead Darktown mother, too. “Andraste’s arse,” the mage repeats a third time, though this is a whisper, and Sebastian only hears it because he refuses to leave Hawke’s bedside. Anders presses his fingertips to his temples. Hawke shudders on the bed, and this time her cry is weaker. Fainter.

Fenris hovers in the doorway, his markings still ever-so-faintly glowing. Sebastian wants to hit him. Sebastian has never want to hit anyone _more._

_She now has the right to challenge you._

“Someone find me lyrium. She’ll have some somewhere,” Anders commands. Fenris goes at once, without comment, without complaint. “Vael, give me your knife. Find me some water.”

“Please,” Sebastian begs. Softly. So softly. A breath. A prayer.

And Anders pauses, briefly settling one hand on Sebastian’s shoulder. “She’s not going to die. Not if I have any say in the matter. She’s not going to die. Do you understand me? _She's not going to die_.”

To Sebastian’s ear, it sounds just the same as _please, please, please, Maker, please don’t take her, please._

But he wants to believe. He has to believe.

Sebastian puts his head in his hands and weeps.


	13. M is for Ministration

**M is for Ministration**

Usually the maids are gone by the time Sebastian returns to his chambers, having tended the fire or turned down his sheets in his absence. This time, however, after his grandfather has been commended to the Maker and the scent of ashes still lingers, haunting him, he finds a girl still in his room. She’s dusting (how strange, Sebastian thinks, just _dusting_ on a day like this one; how strange that life goes on, and yet here’s the proof it does), and she jumps when he enters.

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” the maid says, dropping into a deeper curtsey than is warranted. “I-I didn’t mean to intrude.”

He’s back earlier than expected, he supposes. There’s a… party seems the wrong word. A gathering. A wake. And Sebastian is not attending. He prefers to be alone with his memories. He does not want to share.

Sebastian waves her away, already thinking about how he will spend the rest of the day in the practice yard. He’ll spar, if he can find a partner. Knives are not his strength (better them than a sword), but he needs the distraction. It’s hard to think about anything else when someone’s driving at you with a blade. 

He supposes people will talk. He doesn’t much care.

Perhaps it is only misplaced grief for his grandfather, but he finds himself remembering Pup and wishing for that steady companionship, that unconditional love. No strings attached. Everything comes with strings in his family. Gathering his bow and his practice blades from the rack where they rest, he turns and is surprised to see the maid still lingering near the doorway, shuffling from foot to foot, her expression caught between frightened and nervous.

“Is there something else?” he asks (snaps, really, if he’s honest. His tone too sharp and wounded for anything but _snapping_ ). He imagines she’s broken something—or stolen something—and it is guilt making her skittish.

“N-no, my lord. It’s only—” She glances down at her hands, and when she sees the rag still caught between her fingers, she hides that hand behind her back. “I wish I could…do something. Help. You seem so sad.”

His first instinct is to shout at her, to banish her from his presence, to inform her how utterly inappropriate her words are. Indeed, he opens his mouth to dismiss her—not just from his rooms, but from her position—but the words he speaks are, “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

He can’t help it. He laughs. A short, sharp, bitter bark of something very far from mirth. “Whatever _for?_ ”

The girl takes a step backward, loosing a startled gasp when her back hits the wall. “I didn’t… I meant no offense, Your Highness.”

He grimaces. “It is I who ought to beg your forgiveness. I am… I am not myself.”

“Your grandfather was—”

“I don’t want to speak of him.”

Nodding, the girl ducks her head, gaze fixed firmly on the floor. Again Sebastian feels he’s misstepped. “Again, your forgiveness,” he sighs.

“I only meant to say he was a good prince, my lord. He’ll be missed.”

For some reason these words, spoken by this girl with her earnest green gaze, touch him in a way all the formal condolence he’s been offered cannot. He nods, his throat tight. “You may go now,” he says, because for all her sincerity and all her kindness, he does not want the servant girl to see him cry.

He turns away from her, but instead of hearing the door close as she leaves, he feels her soft touch against his shoulder. “Prince Sebastian,” she whispers, “it’s not much, but I…”

She rises on her toes and presses her lips to his cheek. He blinks at her, but doesn’t pull away. Grief and sorrow and sudden desire all mix together in equal parts, confusing and painful and uncomfortable. Whatever it is she reads on his face, she doesn’t flee. She wraps warm arms around him (he doesn’t remember feeling cold, but as soon as she touches him—she’s so _warm_ —he realizes he _is_ , he’s _freezing_ ) and kisses his cheek again. Her lips are just slightly chapped. Not as soft as Flora Harimann’s. Her hands are rougher, too—from work. Flora’s never done a day of work in her life.

_Stop thinking about Flora, Sebastian._

The maid’s nimble fingers pull at ties and buttons. He stares when she shrugs out of her dress, and gasps when she pushes his shirt from his shoulders. And then he’s not thinking about Flora anymore, because this is something more than kissing, more than clothed fumbling, certainly different than what he’s done alone in the darkness of his bedchamber. 

Then he stops thinking altogether. It’s only _this_ and _now_ and _her_. No grief. No loss. Just _this._ Instinct. Emotion. Her soft cries (not sad ones). Him trembling. Her fingers in his hair. Her mouth. Her _heat._

Then release. And relief. And on the heels of these follows guilt.

Sebastian doesn’t know what to do afterward. He’s never… he’s out of his element. He watches as she gathers her things, half-hiding herself even though he’s already seen her in her creamy-skinned, lightly-freckled entirety. “Thank you,” he says, hesitantly. (Is he supposed to thank her? He _is_ grateful, after all. Oh, Maker, he doesn’t know what to do.) “Can I—do you want—I have… do you need money?”

She looks stricken. “No, Your Highness. That’s not—oh, sweet Andraste, _no._ ”

And then she flees, but not before he sees the tears in her eyes.

He realizes then he doesn’t even know her name. He hadn’t even bothered asking.

#

Hawke doesn’t die.

It’s a nearer thing than most realize. It’s certainly a nearer thing than the stories that begin circulating almost immediately. In the stories, the battle is much shorter. In the stories, Hawke doesn’t stumble from the great hall with an arm around her middle to keep her guts from spilling out. In the stories, it’s just another adventure, and she’s just another triumphant hero.

The reality is not so pretty.

“Magic can do a great deal,” Anders says, after countless lyrium potions and countless hours spent pouring vast quantities of magic into Hawke’s broken, dying body. “No matter what the templars will have you think, magic’s not without limitations. I’ve done what I can. Recovery… recovery isn’t going to happen overnight.”

Hawke remains unconscious for days. While Kirkwall repairs damage and tales of her victory begin to spread, she drifts in and out of dreams, never quite waking. Sebastian snatches sleep when he can, propped in a chair beside Hawke’s bed. He doesn’t leave her. Anders comes and goes at all hours of the day and night, his expression never quite as pleased as Sebastian would like. The mage always seems surprised to see him, but whatever his thoughts, he keeps them to himself. 

On the fourth day, Hawke turns her head. Her lips pull into the faintest echo of her usual smile, and she croaks, “Maker’s balls, Sebastian. I feel like shit.”

She falls asleep again directly afterward, but it’s a corner, and it’s been turned. After a week, she’s able to sit (not quite upright, but leaning against a mountain of pillows; her midsection is still tender and the threat of reinjury still looms). After two weeks, she can almost feed herself. Her muscles are weak, though, and Anders is adamant she must take things slowly.

Sebastian takes over the role of nursemaid. Hawke resists at first (when she’s conscious enough to do so), but the refusal is token; Bodahn and Orana are capable, but Hawke requires a great deal of care. Anders has the clinic to tend to. Aveline has the Guard.

In reality, Sebastian is too afraid of losing her to entrust her to another’s care.

(This, of course, he keeps to himself.)

When the gawkers (and of course they exist; Hawke’s been named Champion) come to call, Sebastian runs interference. _The Champion is occupied at the moment,_ he says. _The Champion has other business to attend to._

He does not say _the Champion is unable to rise from her bed_ and he counts on Varric’s stories to do the rest. While Hawke recovers, she is spotted on the Wounded Coast taking on a band of slavers single-handed. She is on Sundermount, battling dragons and varterral. She is at a hunting party in Orlais.

Really, she is in her room. Listening to him read. Talking, sometimes. Sleeping. She sleeps a great deal, and mumbles brokenly in her dreams. She speaks to her dead family. Sometimes she says his name, and when he answers he realizes she’s still asleep. He wonders what she dreams of him. 

He feeds her when she’s too weak to feed herself. He moves her limbs the way Anders has told him, to keep the muscles from atrophying. He helps Orana clean and dress her, and he never looks too closely at the scar even Anders’ magic can do little to cure.

Every day she grows stronger. Instead of _please, please, please_ his devotions become _thank you, thank you, thank you._

He doesn’t think about his _role._ He doesn’t think about the choice always looming before him: priest or prince. His whole world shrinks to Hawke, and her recovery. He doesn’t think about tomorrow, because today is the only thing that matters.

When she needs to shout or curse or rage, he takes her words and holds them close, because no matter what she says, he’s grateful she’s alive to say anything at all _._

He holds her when she cries.

She lets him.


	14. N is for Nightmares

**N is for Nightmares**

The walls press in. The floor crumbles beneath his feet. No matter what direction he turns, some new threat looms. Putting his hands out he can touch the too-near walls, the rough stone scraping at his palms. He can’t take in a full breath, no matter how he struggles, and his lungs burn.

Sebastian wakes on a strangled shout, pushing himself violently upright, startling the girl beside him so acutely she screams, clutching the blankets up under her chin, her eyes almost comically wide. He recognizes nothing around him at first, and thinks this is another facet of the Fade, another trick of his dreams. 

Then the evening before comes back to him in fragments: cards in the taproom (he even let others win, most of the time; he’s learned magnanimity wins more friends, and he’s not desperate for the money); rounds and rounds of drinks (here, too, friendship is easily won by the hand that provides without expecting recompense); the pretty girl with her pretty smile and her very pretty breasts offering companionship (as they so often do, once the word _prince_ is whispered).

It’s heady brew, so much _attention_.

And yet he knows what the dream means. He’s been here too long, in this little town not quite far enough away from Starkhaven. He’s been too free with his gold, and too free with his name. They’ll find him if he stays, and drag him back to his disapproving parents with their disapproving frowns and their threats of sending him to a life he has no intention of living.

Beside him, the girl—Anna? Mara? Ellie? he doesn’t remember—whispers soothing platitudes until he settles next to her again.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow will bring a different little inn with a different little taproom; different men to befriend, different women to bed. For now there is this, and he sends up a brief prayer for a night plagued by no more dreams as he draws the girl near and is comforted by the sound of her breathy giggle in his ears.

#

Hawke is careful about her injury when she’s awake. She takes no unnecessary risks, and she does not push herself to be recovered before she is. Sleeping, however, is another matter. She thrashes in her dreams, and cries, and once wakes Sebastian by falling completely from the bed.

He is at her side at once, before he’s even awake, gathering her up as gently as he can, reflexively checking for blood, for some sign her wounds have reopened. (This is the reason he sleeps on a divan in her chamber every night. In the morning he hides the blankets and the pillows, and he and Hawke pretend he’s not living in her house. In the night he stands guard, so she doesn’t undo everything Anders has done.) 

Clutching at his shirt, she presses her face to his chest, breathing heavily, every inhale the precursor to a sob.

“Tell me it’s not real,” she whispers. “Tell me they’re alive. My hands, Sebastian, my hands are always reaching, always grasping. They’re too slow. My hands are always empty. Tell me they’re all alive.”

He won’t lie to her, not about this, no matter how much he wishes to soothe her pain. Instead, Sebastian sings snatches of old folk songs (nothing from the Chant; she has forgiven _him_ , perhaps, but the Maker still has much to answer for by her accounting. He can hardly blame her, so he keeps his prayers silent) and tells tales with happy endings. He sits with his back to the headboard and she curls against him, careful of her belly, one hand still clutching his shirt, as if this lifeline will keep her from dreaming bad dreams when she sleeps again.

It won’t. They both know it. Still, it is comfort enough while she’s awake, and he will not begrudge her that.

He understands. In truth, the weight of her hand comforts him, too. 

In his nightmares, Hawke screams and slides to the end of the Arishok’s blade and does not rise again.

In his nightmares he walks the halls of the palace in Starkhaven, his feet slipping in blood. Dead faces mock him, chide him. Like Hawke, in these dreams his hands are always empty. He never dreams of saving them. He always comes too late. 

He can never catch his breath. The walls close in all around him.

Sometimes he thinks it’s a wonder either of them ever sleeps at all.


	15. O is for Oasis

**O is for Oasis**

Sometimes, it’s not about running and it’s not about hiding. It’s not about reveling in being the center of attention after seventeen years of feeling second-rate and invisible. Sometimes it’s not about his family, and it’s not about his future, and it’s not about wanting more than is rightfully his to have.

Sometimes it’s just being a face in the crowd. It’s about being one of many voices raised in song, one of many players seated around a gaming table. It’s about blending in, as much as he can.

Sometimes Sebastian hears conversations about crops or bandits or weather, and even though these are subjects he’s only ever given purely academic thought to, he listens, and sometimes he almost thinks he understands. Conversations are never about politics, never about the petty power squabbles between nobles, never about who wore what to the last ball and does that mean there’s been a resurgence in the popularity of chartreuse?

Sometimes it’s about laughing children playing games amongst the patrons, running and shouting and generally making nuisances of themselves, but instead of being reprimanded, they’re only given fond gazes. Sometimes it’s about someone pulling out an old fiddle or flute or drum, and the commencement of an impromptu country dance. Sometimes it’s about an old man telling stories of days no one else remembers, and everyone stopping to listen, because age is wisdom and wisdom has value.

Mostly in these moments, these bright moments, these peaceful moments, these moments Sebastian comes to treasure in a way he’s never treasured anything else, it’s about being part of something _else_ , and delighting in it.

#

In Hawke’s house, in the month or so after the battle with the Arishok, news comes only through Varric, and even though the dwarf is an uncommonly good storyteller, Sebastian can see the scars in the stories, the places in the narrative where Varric has been forced to cut and his even his skills don’t allow for a seamless transition. When Varric says, “The city is peaceful now that the Qunari have gone,” Sebastian knows he’s saying, “The Knight-Commander’s hand is a heavy one, and no one has risen to take the Viscount’s place.” 

Hawke, moved from her bed to the garden (Anders says the fresh air will do her good), turns her face to the sunlight and nods. She knows the meaning behind Varric’s words, too, Sebastian thinks, but much as she might want to help, it is not yet her time.

She is stronger now, able to move about without pain, able to feed and bathe and clothe herself. Sebastian catches her sending longing looks toward her bow every now and again, but she’s not foolish enough to think herself quite ready for that. She doesn’t complain. She’s gathering her strength. Sebastian’s afraid she’ll need it, every ounce.

He notices she never asks Varric too many questions. They all know the time is coming when she will have to. The mantle of Champion is not one to be worn lightly, and for good or ill, Meredith has set her on a path she can’t—and won’t—step away from.

But for now they have sunlight in the garden, and Varric spinning tales to make Hawke laugh, and peace.

He prays it is enough. He fears that it is not.


	16. P is for Protection

**P is for Protection**

“Aww, c’mere, Lizzie-love,” says the man at the bar. “Y’know I only wanna give you a cuddle.”

The waitress, Lizzie, shakes her head and gracefully slips away from the drunk man’s grasp. Sebastian has been watching variations on this dance for the past hour—watching and noticing and growing increasingly angry—as the man drinks pint after pint and his attentions to the disinterested serving girl grow more and more blatant and more and more unwelcome. Lizzie stopped serving him an hour ago, but somehow he manages to finagle more drinks.

On Lizzie’s next pass through the crowd, the man at the bar reaches out and pinches her bottom, and when she whirls to face him, he grabs her wrist. Her tray full of empty glasses falls to the floor with a crash. The bartender shouts a curse—at _her_ , even though it’s clearly not her fault. Another patron elbows his drinking partner in the ribs, points at the altercation, and laughs. Sebastian sees Lizzie try to tug her arm away, and he sees the tears in her wide eyes as she searches the room for someone to help her.

He’s on his feet in an instant, nearly overturning the card table. One of his table-mates barks a curse, but Sebastian hardly hears it. He doesn’t understand how people can be laughing and joking and shouting to one another while something so obvious is happening right before their eyes.

“Let her go,” he commands in a voice that demands respect—his prince’s voice, the voice of someone entirely expecting to be obeyed _at once_ —but the drunk just sneers at him, using his grip on her arm to tug Lizzie closer.

“Keep your nose outta my business, lad,” says the drunk. “This here’s between Lizzie and me—”

Sebastian has never hit anyone before. Not with intent to injure. Apart from occasional tussles with his brothers (even those rare, because he was so much younger and smaller than they), and hours and hours of sparring practice in the yard, he’s never raised his hand against another person. He doesn’t know if it’s the tone of the man’s voice, or the look in Lizzie’s eyes, or the way the drunk is gripping her arm so tightly Sebastian can see her fingers twitching, but he doesn’t stop to think. He just _hits_. Hard. As hard as he can.

The drunk’s face snaps to the side, and Lizzie screams even as she skips backward, released from the man’s hold. Her wrist is already bruising. Sebastian shakes out his hand, wishing he’d aimed for something softer than a cheekbone. 

Then, with the resilience of the truly inebriated, the drunk is on his feet again and already swinging at Sebastian.

The counterattack takes him entirely off guard. He has the strangest desire to cross his arms over his chest, look imperiously down his nose and say _don’t you have any idea who I am?_ He doesn’t, though, but nor does he manage to block the oncoming blow, and a moment later the drunk’s fist connects with Sebastian’s face. He _hears_ his nose break even before he feels the pain of it.

“Maker’s breath,” one of the bystanders cries, “Wil’s just broken the young prince’s nose!”

Sebastian wonders vaguely how they know who he is—he hadn’t let anything slip—and then he doesn’t care, because Wil the drunk is coming at him again, flailing wildly as he looks to land another blow. This time, Sebastian doesn’t make the same mistake. He drops, swinging out his foot to catch Wil between the ankles, and the drunk falls headfirst into the gathering crowd. A moment later, ignoring the pain in his face, Sebastian’s on the man’s back, hauling his arms into a grip it’ll only hurt him to try and break free of.

Not unlike what the bastard had been doing to Lizzie.

Sebastian swallows the desire to smash the man’s face into the ground. Wil struggles, screaming as he nearly dislocates his own shoulder in the process, before falling limp to the floor.

“He’s gone and passed out good now,” says another of the bystanders. “Bloody Wil, always making trouble.”

Someone offers Sebastian a hand up, and he takes it gratefully. Now the fighting’s done, he feels lightheaded, dizzy. And his face _hurts._ Someone asks how he’s feeling and he waves them away, slumping into a chair. Lizzie approaches with a damp rag, and he lets her clean the blood from his face.

 _Imagine that,_ he thinks, dazed, _blood on my face. Blood on_ my _face._

“Thank you,” she whispers, throwing a strained look over her shoulder. A couple of the other men are heaving Wil to his feet, though as far as Sebastian can see the man’s still entirely out cold. “He doesn’t mean it. The drink… the drink takes him in a bad way.”

Sebastian tilts his head (which hurts) and furrows his brow (which, oddly, hurts _even more_ ). She won’t look at him.

“We’ll see him home, Lizzie,” calls one of the men.

Something about the way they say it, and about the way Lizzie bows her head in utter resignation, tips him off. “Oh,” Sebastian says. “But he was _hurting_ you.”

“That’s not him, not really. It’s the drink.”

It’s an excuse. He knows it. He sees that she knows it, too. “Do you have children?” he asks.

“N-no.” By the look on her face, this is something of a sore spot. Sebastian can’t help thinking it is, perhaps, a blessing in disguise. “I’m sorry he did this to your face. Your poor nose.”

He doesn’t particularly care about his nose. He’s still thinking about how no one else had attempted to help her. He’s thinking about the look of terror in her eyes, and the hopelessness. He’s thinking about the bruise already forming on her wrist, and he’s thinking about how, now that she’s so close, he can see the new bruise is not the only one marking her. “Take this,” he says. 

It’s most of the gold he has, but he knows he can always win more. He presses the purse into her hands. She refuses it, of course, but he closes her reluctant fingers around the leather. “Start a new life,” he says. “Go to Starkhaven. Disappear in the city.” He contemplates sending her to the palace for work, but his name hardly carries the weight she needs. They’d probably turn her away before the first syllable left her lips. “That much money will keep you until you find another place.”

“You make it sound so simple,” she says, sadly. Still, she takes the money.

Later, after a pint on the bartender that does little to soothe the ache in his head, Sebastian follows the man upstairs to the room he’s rented for the night. “Not sure you did the girl a service,” the bartender says. “Wil’ll be none too pleased when he wakes, and chances are she’ll take the brunt.”

Sebastian hopes he’s wrong. He hopes Lizzie is already gone. He hopes she flees while her brutish husband sleeps in a puddle of his own sick.

“I don’t care what else is said about me,” Sebastian retorts sharply, “but I don’t ever want to be the kind of man who stands idly by when a person is being hurt by someone bigger and stronger than they.”

The bartender gives him an unwavering, even glance and lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “To each his own, lad.”

The man disappears down the hallway before Sebastian can snap something about the inappropriateness of the word _lad_. He’s tired though, and his head hurts, and in the end, he doesn’t care. Not about being called lad. He cares about other things, but he’s done what he can. He hopes Lizzie does the rest.

“Heard a rumor we might find you here,” says a familiar voice— _too familiar_ —as a hand shakes him awake.

Sebastian squints through a truly phenomenal headache and sees three men dressed from head to heel in dirt-smudged white and gold. He can’t even muster a response; he lets his head loll back against the pillows.

“It’s a fine disguise, Your Highness,” says Leland, captain of his parents’ personal guard. “Not quite good enough.”

Which is how Sebastian is brought back to his parents with a broken nose and two black eyes, armed with the conviction that—in spite of it having led to his capture—he’d done the right thing.

#

When Hawke gets it in her head to do something, it is virtually impossible to stop her, even if that something is dangerous.

 _Especially_ when it’s dangerous, it seems to Sebastian.

“I need to go to the Gallows,” she says.

“Hawke…”

She glowers at him. “Opposition noted, Sebastian. Even Anders says I’m more or less good as new. I think I can handle an excursion.”

 _More or less good as new_ is something of an overstatement. She still can’t wield her weapon, and she’s not nearly as fast on her feet as she was before. Though he no longer sleeps on a divan in her bedroom, Sebastian still spends most of his waking hours in the Hawke estate. He knows what her strengths are, but he also knows the weaknesses that linger.

(“Don’t you have orphans to take care of?” she once snapped at him in a fit of pique. Then, as if realizing what she’d said, the life had utterly gone from her. She _was_ an orphan now. Sometimes she forgot. He never did.)

In the mornings, when she has more energy, they train (gently), sparring hand to hand because her torso’s not quite ready for the drastic motion pulling a longbow’s string requires. She’s getting better. It’s taking longer than she likes.

She waves her hand dismissively, as if _trip to the Gallows_ is synonymous with _picnic at the beach_. (Though, perhaps picnicking at the Wounded Coast _is_ nearly as dangerous, when push comes to shove.) “I want to talk to the Knight-Captain,” she says.

In a way, it’s a relief. He’d rather they make the trip to speak with Ser Cullen. Sebastian’s still not entirely certain what to make of the Knight-Commander—and the Knight-Commander’s bestowal of the title Champion—and he doesn’t want to find out while Hawke’s still too weak to pull a bow.

“Maker’s balls, Sebastian,” Hawke gripes. “Your _face._ You’re worse than my mo—you’re worse than a nursemaid. Come, if you like. You can be my protection. You’re Chantry. They’re Chantry. They probably won’t murder me in cold blood while you’re looking on.”

_You’re Chantry. They’re Chantry._

He supposes it’s technically true, and yet it pains him to hear her say it. He knows in what regard she holds the templars.

When the two of them reach the Gallows, the Knight-Captain looks surprised to see them. As much as Ser Cullen _shows_ surprise, that is. Mostly it means his eyebrows twitch and his back stiffens ever so slightly. “Hawke,” he says, warmly enough. “Though I suppose I should say _Champion,_ now.”

Hawke makes a face. “I wish you wouldn’t. How are… things?”

Cullen’s gaze flicks over Hawke’s shoulder to meet Sebastian’s. Sebastian can’t quite tell what the look means. Is Cullen looking for a hint as to Hawke’s intentions? Solidarity? _You’re Chantry. They’re Chantry._ It’s strange. The words stick, chafing. Sebastian wonders what it says of him that he thinks of the Kirkwall Chantry as _home_ , but the Gallows as something else entirely. Even now, with Hawke, he feels nothing of warmth or peace or security here; he wants to be gone. The courtyard is mostly empty, and Sebastian still wishes to have his bow actually in his hands and drawn. He feels no loyalty to this place, no matter what its connection to his faith. The Knight-Captain seems fine, almost friendly, but Sebastian doesn’t care for the way the other templars look at Hawke.

They look a little like vultures, he realizes. Waiting for her to misstep. Waiting for her to fall. So they can tear her to shreds.

As if she’s _dangerous_ to them.

And Hawke holds herself as if she doesn’t see it. Or doesn’t care. Her posture is relaxed, her smile almost genuine. (Sebastian sees the hardness in her eyes, though, and knows she’s watching and noticing and cataloguing. This isn’t just a hello. She wants to see for herself how heavily Meredith’s hand has come down.)

“Peaceful,” Cullen replies.

“Can I see my sister?”

This startles the Knight-Captain enough that he takes a single step backward. “Hawke, you know that’s not—”

Still smiling her hard smile, Hawke says, “I was just wondering. Still figuring out what it means, you know. To be Champion of Kirkwall. I like to know where the lines are drawn. Give the Knight-Commander my best, won’t you?”

She turns on her heel and strides away before Cullen can form a response. Again he and Sebastian share a glance. Then Sebastian turns as well, his long gait eating the distance Hawke has already put between them. When he catches her, he immediately sees the relaxation is gone, and so is the smile.

“I hate this place,” she snarls, right hand clenching and unclenching into a helpless fist at her side, as if her fingers long to close around the grip of her bow. “I bloody _hate_ it.”

_You’re Chantry. They’re Chantry._

He hates it, too. Chantry or not.


	17. Q is for Questioning

**Q is for Questioning**

It’s not quite a prison cell.

But it’s certainly not freedom, either.

Sebastian’s not actually _in_ the dungeons in any case (and for a moment, he’d genuinely thought that was where his father meant to send him). The room has no windows big enough for him to slip through, and guards are posted outside the door at all hours, but as far as prisons go, it’s luxurious. It is comfortably furnished, he’s attended by a very quiet servant, and he’s brought fine meals in every way superior to bread and water. 

It’s quite civilized. It’s still prison. He’s not allowed to leave. And no one save his servant and his guards are allowed to visit.

Curled up in a chair, reading (a small kindness and a small escape), he hears the door open. Expecting another tray of food, Sebastian is surprised when, instead of his servant, he looks up to see his father.

Dropping his book, Sebastian scrambles to his feet. His rebellion doesn’t extend to incivility or to slight. He bows, the precise courtesy of a son to his royal father.

Father only nods, closing the door. “What am I meant to do with you, lad?”

 _Send me on my way,_ Sebastian thinks, even as he knows it’s not possible.

“You’ve led us on a merry chase,” his father continues, pacing the length of the room. It’s small enough it only takes four long strides to reach the other side. Instead of turning around, his father stands with his hands loosely clasped behind his back, staring out the tiny slit of a window. “I suppose it’s only luck or the Maker’s intervention that’s kept you from leaving a trail of by-blows in your wake. Though I suppose time will tell.”

Sebastian blushes.

“You didn’t think, did you? What a muddle that would be.” Father turns away from the window and raises his hand. Sebastian flinches, but his father only pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “And no help from your brothers and their blighted wives. Aurelia lost the first, you know, while you were gone and a second… didn’t take. I don’t think Con’s even _slept_ with his wife.”

“He was in love with Flora Harimann,” Sebastian blurts. Then he feels instantly ashamed, as if the knowledge is a secret he wasn’t meant to tell. Perhaps it is. (Connall doesn’t know about the kisses in the garden on the night of his wedding. Sebastian feels ashamed for that, too, but… but not as much as he should.) 

Father doesn’t look surprised.

“Flora’s a nice girl, but her family… no, lad. Trust me when I say there’s a mess of reasons I want to keep our bloodline from mingling with theirs.”

Sebastian’s not sure what startles him more: that his father’s actually _talking_ about such things with him, or the words themselves. “I thought… they’re your friends.”

Father turns a steady, cool gaze on him. Sebastian feels laid bare beneath the sharpness. “You know better than that, lad. Friendship’s not the same as family. Especially for us.”

“Politics,” Sebastian spits.

Instead of angry, Father only looks disappointed. Deeply, immeasurably disappointed. “And how well does the world work without politics, Sebastian? Sheep need shepherds. _The Maker is king in the heavens, but it is the kings of Thedas who must recreate His worldly glory._ You think it’s all about the next lass and the next lark? For good or ill, you were born a Vael. For good or ill, being a Vael means more than spending a lifetime chasing worldly pleasures. It certainly means more than abusing your name and your position to do so. The Maker gave us a responsibility. To the people of Starkhaven. To the Free Marches.”

Sebastian bites his lip. Tilting his chin just a little defiantly, he says, “The Maker turned His back on us, Father. I don’t think He cares much what we do.”

“So your answer is to turn your back on Him in return?”

“I don’t have to _turn_ anything. He’s not _listening_. What’s the point of talking to someone who’s not listening?” Sebastian doesn’t hear the double-meaning until the words are already spoken, and if his father hears—if his father _understands_ —nothing of it shows on his face. The expression is as inscrutable-bordering-on-angry as ever. (Less angry, in this particular case, than Sebastian would have thought. Perhaps it’s only he hasn’t seen his father in so long, but Sebastian sees more _weariness_ now than he ever saw before.)

“I don’t know, lad. I imagine you’ll have time enough to figure it out.”

Sebastian bows his head. “You’re giving me to them.”

“I’m giving you a blighted _purpose_ , Sebastian. Maker knows you haven’t found one on your own.”

 _I tried_ , Sebastian thinks, and if a thought could be a scream, he’d be screaming. _I tried and you didn’t listen._

Besides, he already how his father would respond. He would say: _Well, lad, you didn’t convince me. You didn’t try hard enough._

The drinking and fighting and running and countless bedmates probably didn’t help his cause.

“Don’t give me that look, son. The Vaels nearly always send a—”

“A tithe? A bribe? _What_ , exactly, Father? What am I meant to be? A hostage? You have to see—you have to _know_ —I’m not going willingly.”

Sebastian can’t quite hear the grinding of teeth, but the way his father’s jaw tightens betrays him. “You’re going, nonetheless. And you’re going with Leland. I won’t have you bringing more disgrace down on this family, Sebastian. Do you understand me?”

Sebastian understands. He doesn’t want to, but he does.

“Why didn’t you send me years ago?” Sebastian asks. Even he can hear the resignation in his voice, all the fight gone. “If you meant to do it all along, why not send me as a child? Before I knew better?”

His father doesn’t answer. He only gives Sebastian a long, unreadable look before turning on his heel and heading for the door.

“You leave in the morning, Sebastian. Get some sleep. You’ve quite a journey ahead of you.”

#

“You have to sleep some time, child.”

Sebastian ceases his pacing and turns to find the Grand Cleric seated in one of the pews, watching him. He opens his mouth to protest, but finds he can’t lie to her.

“I’m old, Sebastian. I’m not _blind_. You spend your days with Hawke and your nights pacing the nave. What is it you want of her?”

“Hawke?” he asks, startled.

Elthina gives him a crooked smile. “I meant Andraste, but perhaps yours is the better question.”

Sebastian turns, lifting his eyes to the statue. Mostly to hide his blush. And his confusion. “Answers,” he says. “Guidance. Purpose.”

“One might also ask _whom_ you’re looking to for these things.”

Nodding, Sebastian stares down at the palms of his hands. The lines there offer no answers he can discern. “I feel I have much to learn from Hawke, it’s true. Selflessness. Dedication. Willingness to see all sides before making a judgment. The desire to do good, to see justice triumph even at personal cost. I admire her. It’s no secret. But I don’t deify her. She is flawed, as are we all. But she’s real. She’s _here_. And she _tries._ ”

“You try, child.”

“No,” he says, because it’s true. He’s knows it’s true. He’d change it if he could, but he hasn’t yet figured out how. “I don’t. I react. And I handle disappointment… poorly.”

“Sebastian…”

“No,” he repeats. “I know my flaws. I only wish I knew better how to cure myself of them.”

“Don’t we all, child. Don’t we all.”

He stands in silence a moment longer. “I don’t know,” he says at last, already turning to leave. He pauses beside the Grand Cleric, but sees no answers in her face, either. Pity. Love, even. Certainly concern. But not answers. “I don’t know what I want from either of them. Not really.”

“Keep asking.”

“Who? The Maker?”

“Yourself,” she says, rising slowly from her seat. Sebastian offers an arm, and she accepts it gratefully. She seems so fragile next to him, though the sparkle in her eye as she smiles speaks of life and mirth. “Though perhaps asking the Maker can’t hurt, either.”


	18. R is for Rules

**R is for Rules**

The journey from Starkhaven to Kirkwall is not a short one. Sebastian watches for a moment of distraction, waits for any disturbance that might make his escape possible. Father has sent too many guards, however, and Captain Leland is always watching, too. Sebastian has no idea when the man sleeps.

Sometimes, curled in his blankets, Sebastian considers more drastic measures, but he isn’t willing to kill his father’s men—good Starkhaven men—simply because they’ve been tasked with delivering him to a fate he doesn’t want. He thinks about mild poisons, sleeping draughts, bribery. He even goes so far as to attempt the latter, but somehow Leland discovers it.

Sebastian is not punished. The guard, however, _is._ Sebastian is made to watch as the man is stripped to his skin and lashed to within an inch of his life. Every one of the man’s screams echoes in Sebastian’s skull, a cacophony of pain and guilt.

Afterward, Leland pulls Sebastian aside and says, “I trust you understand the situation now, Your Highness?”

Sebastian does.

He isn’t willing to kill men for his freedom, and he isn’t willing to see them unduly hurt, either.

Besides, he reassures himself, surely there will be opportunity enough when he’s in Kirkwall. For the rest of the journey, Sebastian behaves himself prettily. Leland is clearly distrustful at first, but soon enough Sebastian’s obedience wins him over. Instead of half a dozen guards around him at all times, the number shrinks to two or three. He is even, after begging (and he sees how much Leland appreciates a prince _begging_ him for anything), permitted the use of his bow. (Even Leland approves when Sebastian fells a deer no one else had even seen, and their dinner is suddenly rich with fresh meat.)

Though the road is far from comfortable, Sebastian is sorry to leave it. Kirkwall appears on the horizon, and he has never been so loathe to see it. For most of the journey through its streets, Sebastian is able to convince himself it’s just another trip to visit the Harimanns or the Viscount or some other noble friends. He will have dinners and dancing and a plethora of pretty girls willing to curry favor. 

When, however, they pause in the courtyard, Kirkwall’s Chantry looming before them, it takes all Sebastian’s nerve to walk up the steps and not to turn and run, consequences be damned. Sebastian feels Captain Leland’s hand drop heavily to his shoulder, and the man gives him a subtle push.

The Grand Cleric meets them at the entrance. It has been several years since Sebastian last saw her. Her hair has gone entirely silver, now, and the lines around her eyes are deeper. The smile she gives him, however, is as kind as ever. “It is nice to see you again, Your Highness. Though I wish it were under different terms.”

Her words surprise him. Before he can say anything, though, the Grand Cleric turns to face Leland. The kindness in her smile fades somewhat, and Sebastian sees the sudden hardness in her gaze. “And am I to understand you and your men will be residing with us as well, for a time, Captain?”

“The prince requires… protection, Your Grace.”

“Protection,” she echoes mildly. “You imagine he might come to harm within the safety of the chantry’s walls? Surrounded by templars?”

Leland’s face gives nothing away. “One can never be too certain, Your Grace. Forgive me. Starkhaven has enemies.”

“By all means, protect him from his enemies,” she replies. “But Prince Sebastian is not a prisoner here, Captain. I feel I ought to tell you I won’t stand to see him treated as such.”

A muscle jumps in Leland’s jaw. “I have my orders, Your Grace.”

“Indeed,” she says. Coolly. Much more coolly than Sebastian would ever have dared speak. “But I must remind you, Captain: this is not Starkhaven, I am not one of Prince Lachlan’s subjects, and as such I am not bound by any orders he might give. Prince Sebastian is an honored guest. That is all.”

Captain Leland looks a little as though he’s eaten something unpleasant as he offers the Grand Cleric a deep bow.

“Now,” she says, turning her back on the captain, “will you let me show you where you’ll be staying, Your Highness? I fear it will be somewhat simpler than what you’re used to, but I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

Sebastian nods, taking a step toward her, only to feel Leland’s hand grip his shoulder once again. “You’ll leave your bow with me, Highness.”

Again, it is Elthina who speaks. “I don’t see why that should be necessary, Captain. I am afraid you and I have rather differing opinions on the exact definition of the word _guest._ ” She draws near Sebastian and he offers his arm, an automatic gesture of respect.

“Thank you, child,” she says softly, for his ears alone. But he’s just seen evidence of her strength and he knows she only takes his arm to be polite. She doesn’t need him. Maker, she doesn’t need _anyone._

Leland follows in their wake, and does not even pretend to hide his scowl.

#

“If the Maker wills it,” Hawke rants, pacing from one end of her hall to the other. “ _If_ the _Maker_ wills it! Doesn’t she _see_ , Sebastian? How can she not? ‘Go back to the Gallows and calm down, like a good girl’? Meredith’s not a misbehaving _child_!”

“Hawke,” he says, feeling no small amount of ire himself, though he fears the object of his frustration is not the same as hers. “Her Grace is—”

“Her Grace is caught between a rock and a hard place and don’t think I’m not _aware_ of it, Sebastian. I like her. More than that, I respect her. I do. But frankly? Her silence doesn’t always read as _patience_. She is the _head_ of the Chantry in Kirkwall. In all the _Free Marches._ Meredith is the armed and armored _fist_. You heard her. _You heard her._ Meredith’s paranoid and angry and she will stop at nothing to see her will done. She _said_ as much. Forgive me, but sometimes the Grand Cleric’s silence seems a little too much like endorsement.”

Sebastian crosses his arms over his chest, frowning, but Hawke isn’t looking at him to see. She crosses to her desk, crumples a handful of papers in her hand before dropping them again, and then rests heavily on her arms, head bowed. At her feet, her mabari whines, butting his large head against her calf. “If the Maker wills it,” she mutters again. “To the Void with the Maker’s will.”

“Blasphemy doesn’t become you, Hawke.”

Turning her head, she glowers over her shoulder. “Does blasphemy become me as well as blindness becomes you?” Hawke growls a curse and brings the flat of her hand down hard on her desk. He flinches, but she seems indifferent to the pain her action must have caused. “Both sides are being unrealistic. _No one_ seems willing to see reason, or to listen when alternatives are proposed. Kirkwall’s been without secular leadership for three years. _More_ , some might say. It’s bloody hypocrisy. Meredith doesn’t want Orsino to break her rules, but she has no compunction breaking Kirkwall’s rules to suit her purpose. And the Grand Cleric is _allowing_ it.”

“You might speak to Her Grace—”

“And say _what_ , exactly?” Hawke shouts, turning on him. “The woman you handed the reins of the city to seems to be getting crazier by the day? She sees shadows where there’s only sunlight? Every mage in the blighted Gallows is afraid for their lives, lest a paper cut be taken for evidence of blood magic? I don’t think the _Maker_ is listening, Elthina, so do you mind using your standing for good? Tell me, Sebastian. Tell me exactly what I ought to say that I haven’t tried already?”

“So you’ll have every mage set free to do with their powers as they will? Tevinter’s not a _story_.”

“Don’t you _dare_! I am neither Anders nor Meredith here, Sebastian. I am _trying_ to be balanced. I am trying to be _fair_! I watched the care my father took training my sister. He never pulled punches; he never pretended she wasn’t wielding forces of life and death. Mages need _training_ , but no, I don’t see how _magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him_ translates to _and lo, the Chantry shall take from you your little children and never shall you see or hear from them again. May the gift the Maker gave you be a shackle around your throat, forever holding you beneath the heel of the Chantry._ ”

“You are being unreasonable. Laws exist for—”

“And you’re being dogmatic. As bloody _usual._ ” She pauses, pretending to listen to something in the distance. Her mabari whines again. “What’s that? The Grand Cleric needs someone to stand next to her in the chantry nave? She needs company to help her dither and wait and _do nothing for years_?” Hawke turns an icy glare on him. He is taken aback by the cruelty in it. It's not at all like the Hawke he knows. It's not at all like Hawke, his _friend._  “I know just the man.”

The words are worse than a fist. He can defend himself against physical blows, but this? This is beyond him. His hands begin to shake, and his face feels hot—anger, he thinks, not embarrassment. Anger. Without bothering to respond, he turns on his heel. He hears the dog bark once, but Hawke does not call out to him.

 _Fine_ , he thinks, even as he knows—he _knows_ —nothing about their current situation is in any way fine. _Fine._


	19. S is for Strive

**S is for Strive**

It isn’t easy.

Perhaps naively (almost certainly naively), when the Grand Cleric had given him his opportunity for freedom (A daring escape. The darkened chantry garden. His shaking hands clutching a purse filled with gold. “The only one who can make this commitment is you, Sebastian. The front door will always be open.”) and he’d _chosen_ the Chantry, he’d believed it would be like taking off one set of clothes (the spoiled prince’s finery) in favor of another (the sober robes of the affirmed).

And it isn’t as easy as that. 

He doesn’t realize how easy his life has been until everything is _not_.

He struggles, trying to learn his place. It’s so different from the life he’s come from. No one attends him. He has no money to buy attention. He wrestles with his vices. It’s too quiet here, and too sober (in every sense of the word). Left alone with only his thoughts for company, he comes to realize how achingly shallow and self-centered most of those thoughts truly _are._

It is a deeply unpleasant realization.

Head bowed before the enormous, gloomy statue of Andraste, he finds himself remembering in perfect detail a girl he’d met in a tavern three days outside Starkhaven. She’d had the most delectable freckles, and he’d kissed every single one of them, just to make her blush and squeal. Her mouth had been divine, all plush lips and eagerness and perfect pressure—

 _No_ , he reprimands himself. _Not divine._ This _is divine._ Prayer. Penance. Choosing a life of service and sacrifice over one of idleness and dissipation.

Sometimes he really misses idleness and dissipation.

The Grand Cleric is patient with him, though he earns himself a very stern talking to the day she finds him in a dark corner with one of the pretty, young sisters. He isn’t punished for such transgressions. He doesn’t need to be punished. One disappointed look from the Grand Cleric sends him into a cycle of guilt and self-recrimination harsher than any chastisement she might have applied.

He tries. He stumbles. He tries _harder_.

He has failed at every other challenge set before him in his life.

He can’t fail at this one, too.

He just _can't._

#

“Lover’s quarrel?” Isabela asks, flinging herself into the seat next to him. For half a moment he thinks she’s going to prop her booted feet in his lap, but instead she only crosses her legs at the ankle, folds her hands across her belly, and stretches out.

“I’d prefer to be alone, Isabela.”

She laughs. It’s not a cruel sound, but still Sebastian flinches. “I don’t think so, Princess. You’re in my territory now.”

He manages a small smile. A small, _wry_ smile. Hardly a smile at all, really. “The Hanged Man’s yours now, is it?”

She shrugs. “Downstairs, anyway. Above decks is Varric’s. Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Rearranging herself, Isabela props one elbow on the table, resting her cheek on her fist and gazing at him. She doesn’t blink. Her expression is disconcertingly inscrutable. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t care to dignify your question with an answer.”

She shakes her head gently, her hair brushing her shoulders. He’s momentarily distracted by the glint of light on gold and the faint scent of jasmine and the sea. “I’ve never known you to drown your sorrows, sweet thing.”

“You _don’t_ know me,” he snaps back, drinking down the last of his swill. He doesn’t like the way Isabela watches. He knows her kind. Watching. Noticing.

Seeing too much.

It was foolish to come here, of all places.

“You’re right,” she says, rising gracefully. He can’t tell what she’s thinking as she gazes down at him. “I sure as shit don’t know this snapping, snarling, sorry-for-himself version of you.” She settles one hand on her hip and gestures toward the bar with her chin. “I’m going to the bar. I’m going to get two pints. Then I’ll come back. You’re still here, I’ll figure it’s because you want to talk. If not, well, it won’t be the first time I’ve sat alone in this bar with two pints to myself.”

Sebastian puts his hands on the table, ready to push himself up—up and out and away. He stares at the backs of his hands—dark from the sun; all the familiar freckles and nicks and scars—and says, “I have a tab.”

“That’s what a girl likes to hear.”

He thinks about leaving then, but doesn’t. He’s still staring at the backs of his own hands when she returns, not with pints but with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.

“Upgrade,” she says.

He nods.

“She hasn’t been here for weeks. If that’s who you were hoping to see.”

Sebastian blinks at her, pulling his hands off the table and folding them in his lap. “I wasn’t…”

Isabela smirks and approximates—eerily well—his accent, saying, “Lying is a sin, Brother Sebastian.”

Her audacity startles a chuckle from him. “So it is.”

The smirk slides into the more familiar territory of a leer. “If you’re going to run about sinning, I have any number of ideas I’d be entirely amenable to enabling.”

She pushes a very large glass of whiskey across the table and pours an equally generous portion for herself. “Now, do you have something you’d like to confess to Sister Bela? Please. _Unburden_ yourself.”

Only Isabela, he thinks, can make such words sound so casually, blasphemously invitational. Instead of taking offense, he only chuckles again, and drinks down the entirety of his beverage in two great gulps.

“Andraste’s arse,” Isabela says, dropping the brogue. “I really _don’t_ know you.” She matches his consumption and tops up their glasses again.

“We fought,” he says.

“I did gather that much.”

Sebastian raises his eyebrows. And his glass.

“ _She_ hasn’t been here. Fenris has. He says she’s been tetchy for weeks. Ever since that showdown with Meredith and Orsino.”

“Tetchy.”

“Well. One does have to _decode_ Fenris. I believe he said ‘ill-tempered.’ Or, you know, _alluded_ to it.”

“She’s avoiding me.”

“She does that.” Isabela gazes past him, and he sees a hint of genuine regret in her eyes before it flees. “She didn’t talk to me for six months after the thing with the Qunari.” Isabela holds up a hand in silent surrender. “I… may have deserved it.”

“Also she was _dying_.”

“Also she was dying. And you? Stealing relics, are you? Getting her locked into mortal combat duels to the death to save your hide?”

Sebastian doesn’t laugh. He stares into the depths of his glass for several long moments before downing the lot again.

“Balls,” Isabela mutters. “Come on, Princess. What’s the matter?”

“That nickname, for a start.”

“You prefer Choir Boy?”

He fixes her with a level gaze. “I prefer my name.”

Wrinkling her nose as though he’s said something inexcusably distasteful, she shakes her head. Then she sighs. “Look, you don’t have to tell me details. Varric will make them up for me later, if I ask. So, you fought. Figure out what’s important, Sebastian. To be _right_ , even if it means holding a grudge? Or your… whatever it is with Hawke?”

“We’re friends.”

Isabela scoffs, and when he glares at her, she only reaches over and pats him lightly on the hand. “Right,” she says. “Friends. So. What matters more?”

Like her very first question, he doesn’t have to respond to this one. They both know the answer already.

“I’ve come to realize it’s always worth _trying_ ,” she says, seriously. More seriously than he’s known Isabela to say anything. “She has a way of opening doors. Sometimes we don’t like what we find behind them. But that’s not her fault.” 

He nods, even though Isabela’s not looking at him to see it.

The pirate fills their glasses a third time. “We are going to drink the entirety of this,” she remarks the way another might say, ‘oh, it looks like rain.’

It is Sebastian’s turn to smirk. “You’re mistaken if you think you’ll get me drunk enough to go through my pockets.”

Isabela opens her eyes wide in mock innocence. “I would _never_.”

“I’ve seen you do it.”

She gives his unarmored shoulder a friendly punch. “I never pickpocket my friends, Princess.”

It’s strange. _Choir Boy_ so often falls like an insult from Varric’s lips. Isabela’s sobriquet doesn’t sound disparaging in the least. He’s about to say something (something he’d regret later, probably, about friendship and kindness and appearances and value) when Isabela leans forward and whispers conspiratorially, “Aveline, maybe. But only for her reaction. Can you imagine?”

“Aye,” Sebastian agrees. “All of Kirkwall up in arms.”

“Worth it for the look on her face.”

“You’d never get her drunk enough.”

“I know,” Isabela gripes. “I’ve tried.”

Sebastian smiles—genuinely smiles—and feels lighter at heart than he has in ages.


	20. T is for Taste

**T is for Taste**

Like all the affirmed, Sebastian takes his turn in the kitchens. He goes grudgingly. Much as he remembers enjoying the warmth and camaraderie of the kitchens in Starkhaven, it takes a while (a long while, if he’s honest) to cease feeling he’s being made to do work beneath him.

Other things he accedes to willingly. He teaches those who can’t read. His skills as an archer are put to use training templars as once he’d thought he’d be training militia.

The kitchen is something of a sticking point. A lord learns literacy and weaponry. He doesn’t learn to bake bread and make stew. He has people for that. He has _servants_ for that.

Della rules the chantry kitchens. She is a huge, aproned matriarch, who, in spite of her girth, can move silently as any rogue. She wields a wooden spoon the way a commanding general might wield a blade, and has no qualms about using it. Sebastian doesn’t realize she’s crept up on him until he feels the sting of her wooden weapon across the top of his hand.

He bites his tongue to keep acid words from spilling out. He has no authority here. He knows it. He _does_ know it. But old habits are hard to break. In Starkhaven—

_You’re not in Starkhaven anymore. You’ll never be in Starkhaven again._

“You know the problem with your bread, lad?”

He shakes his head. His bread is fine, now. It used to be worse. He’s learned about measuring and kneading and resting and proofing and all sorts of things. His loaves are edible. He does everything right. He does everything just as he’s been told.

“It’s tastes of superiority.”

He blinks. Della doesn’t. She stares, daring him to contradict her. He doesn’t. Not out loud, anyway.

“Exactly,” she says. “You’re too good for this, are you?”

She raps his knuckles again, her spoon darting out lightning-quick. He has good reflexes and _sees it coming_ and still can’t get out of the way. Scowling, he pulls his stinging hand to his chest.

“Sit.”

Della flings her arm wide, pointing at the table with her spoon. Sebastian flinches, and she chuckles. “Won’t hit you again unless you ask for it.”

“I get the feeling I’m always asking for it as far as you’re concerned.”

“Clever lad. Sit.”

He sits.

A few moments later, Della joins him. Her spoon is nowhere to be seen, and she carries a plate piled with slices of bread.

“Taste this one.”

He accepts obediently, taking a mouthful. It’s not his bread. He knows that much one once. Even when he follows the recipe exactly, his bread is never so light and flavorful. The crisp crust and perfectly soft crumb melt in his mouth. He thinks of the laughter from his childhood, the warmth of the hearth, the way Starkhaven’s head cook always sang as she baked.

“It’s… good,” he offers weakly.

“Of course it’s good, you dolt. It’s mine. Now this.”

The second slice isn’t quite as good as the first, but it’s not his either. He thinks it was left in the ovens just a little too long—it carries a hint of smoke. He remembers the first night away from Starkhaven, sitting in the corner of a smokey tavern, eating bread and stew and hoping not to be recognized. A very pretty girl sat down next to him—

“Right,” Della says. “That’s enough of that one. And this?”

The third is his. He can taste the difference at once. He knows—he’s _certain_ —he used the precise amount of salt called for in the recipe, but his bread tastes bitter. The texture is leaden, and even the one mouthful he manages to swallow sits like a rock in his gut. He shakes his head, confused. “I did what it said. I followed the directions. I swear—”

“Followed directions. Maker’s breath, boy! This is _bread_. You don’t listen to some scrap of paper to get it right. You listen to the _bread._ And you stop feeling sorry for yourself. You listen to me, and listen well, because this is a lesson I’ll only speak once: bread is _important_. You’d better believe bread is more important than _you_ , no matter who you are, or who you were. At the end of the day, more people care about whether they have bread enough to eat than care about the leader of their nation or even about the Word of the Maker. Bread is life. Give it a little respect. I see you scowling at dough again and I’ll give you something to feel glum about.”

He nods, wide-eyed. He believes her.

More than that, he thinks he’s starting to _understand._

“There’s a good lad. Now set aside that last batch—you’ll be eating that yourself, and you’d better believe it—and let’s start something new.”

Nodding again, he watches carefully as Della begins a new batch, and hopes one day he, too, can bake a bread that tastes of hearth and heart and home and happiness.

#

If, at any point before he actually finished someone had stopped him, asked him what he was doing or why he was doing it, Sebastian isn’t certain he’d have known what to say.

Luckily, no one asks.

He walks alone through the streets, carrying his offering in a basket dangling from one elbow. At her door, he knocks once, twice. He’s raising his hand to knock a third time when the door opens a tiny crack.

A huge, red-rimmed green eye peers at him. The door remains mostly closed.

“May I come in, Merrill?” he asks politely.

The door opens a little wider—not enough to admit him, but he can see all of Merrill’s face, at least. She looks as though she’s been weeping for days.

Given everything, she probably has.

“Is it Hawke?” the elf asks. “Does she need me?”

From her tone, from the way the tremulous voice breaks on the last syllable, Sebastian can tell Merrill thinks Hawke will never want her for anything ever again.

Perhaps she’s right.

“No,” Sebastian replies. “I—I came to see you.”

“Alone?”

“As you see.”

“Why?” she glances behind him, as though expecting someone—anyone—else to materialize. “If you’re worried I don’t feel guilty enough, I promise you I do. I did think about those things you said, you know, and I—”

“No,” he repeats, gently. “That’s not why I’m here, either. I… we can all see, Merrill. We can all see how you feel.”

For a moment, he’s certain she will close the door in his face. He waits. Finally, she steps backward, and he sees her feet are bandaged and she moves gingerly, as if in pain. She ducks her head when she notices his gaze. “Glass,” she says, as if this explains everything.

Perhaps it does.

“I’m fine,” she insists.

“I don’t think you are.”

She doesn’t contradict him again.

After another too-long, too-tense moment, he holds the basket he’s carrying out to her.

“What is it?” Confusion pulls at her brow, making her look like she’s going to cry again, making her look too young for the weight she’s carrying on her slender shoulders. “I’m sorry. Is it another holiday I don’t know about? I don’t feel much like celebrating, Sebastian, if it’s all the same—”

“It’s not a holiday. It’s… it’s for you. That’s all.”

She doesn’t look convinced, but she takes the basket. Crossing the room, she props it on her rickety table and opens it very slowly. Then she stops, mid-gesture, and stares.

“Oh,” she says, “ _oh_.”

Sebastian swallows and shifts his weight, folding his now-empty hands loosely behind his back to give them something to do. “Forgive me if it’s… if it’s wrong. Or if it’s presumptuous. I… I found the recipe and I…” He feels foolish now, as though he’s misstepped, and he cannot read the expression on her face. _I’ve probably offended her,_ he thinks. _As usual._

“But how did you find the ingredients?”

He shrugs uncomfortably. “The… the chantry has a big kitchen. I… there was a kind of… of fruit? A berry? I couldn’t find that. I… I used raisins. I had raisins.”

Merrill almost smiles at him. Something—just a tiny iota, but something nonetheless--of the heavy grief lifts, and she tilts her head. “I like raisins.”

“I thought I remembered that.”

She bows her head. “I wish I was better at remembering. At listening.”

He doesn’t know what to say to this. She, who knows so much of her peoples’ history. She, who remembers things from a time most people have forgotten ever existed in the first place. “I’ll… I don’t want to disturb you.”

“Stay,” she says. “It’s better to eat this with someone. It’s how… you know, in the clan, you’re never really alone. Sometimes that’s what I miss most of all. Just _knowing_. Just knowing you’re not alone. Just having someone to eat bread with.”

He understands this. And he doesn’t understand at all. He drags a couple of unsteady chairs to the table, and then she breaks the bread he’s made, handing him a chunk. He takes a bite, but mostly he watches her. She closes her eyes as she swallows the first mouthful, and then she really does smile.

“Oh, Creators,” she says, opening eyes bright with tears and with memory, “oh, Creators, it tastes just like home.”


	21. U is for Understanding

**U is for Understanding**

“I think it’s time you took your vows, lad.”

It has been almost ten years since Sebastian stood cowed before his father and accepted the sentence handed him. He hasn’t returned to Starkhaven in all that time (mostly out of sheer stubbornness; when the Grand Cleric makes her visits she always asks if he will accompany her, and always seems just a little disappointed when he refuses), but various and sundry members of his family occasionally visit when they happen to be in Kirkwall for other reasons.

Sebastian doesn’t mind seeing his brothers, and in the strange, distant way of an uncle who’s hardly considered family, he’s fond of the children his brothers have finally managed to sire. Aurelia and Angus have one sickly son. Connall, once he started sleeping with his Ansburg bride, has managed to acquire new children at alarmingly regular intervals. He has half a dozen, now, and Sebastian’s never even met the three youngest. Connall’s visits to Kirkwall are much rarer. (Sebastian suspects there are faces in the crowds his brother does not wish to see.)

Even after all this time, Sebastian still dreads seeing his father. Ten years have added silver to his father’s hair, and have deepened the lines around his blue eyes, but have done nothing to diminish him. He wears his power like armor, impenetrable. His posture promises swift retribution and justice at the cost of mercy. Hard. Cold. Effective.

No one to be trifled with.

Prince of Starkhaven first. Father a dim second.

Even though they are far from Starkhaven, and a decade separates him from the boy unwilling to go against his father’s will, Sebastian still feels pitiful and inadequate. He can’t help wondering how he looks in his father’s eyes.

(Probably, he fears, little different than he looked at five or fifteen. It doesn’t matter that he’s grown tall and strong. It doesn’t matter that he has faced fears and conquered personal demons in order to find something— _something_ —resembling purpose. He is still four years old, kicking his feet in the chantry out of boredom. He is seventeen, smug and stubborn. It doesn’t matter who he has become, who he is becoming. He is always his father’s failure. Always.)

“I think,” Sebastian begins, too slowly, too haltingly, after too long a pause, “I think whether or not I choose to take vows is between me and the Maker.”

His father snorts, lips twisting in derision. “And here you were worried about finding faith. Hear the Maker now, do you?”

Sebastian feels the words like a blow. “I—”

“That’s enough, Sebastian. Take vows. You and I both know this is where you belong now. Until you make the allegiance formal, your brothers can never rest easy. It’ll be trouble enough with Angus’ lad being so… frail.”

 _Ten years_ , he wants to tell his father. _Ten years I’ve given you no cause to worry._ “Still, Fath—”

“I’ll have armor made for you. Fine armor. As befits your station. It needn’t all be about suffering.”

Sebastian refrains from rolling his eyes only because he’s too angry for flippancy. “One of the vows is a vow of poverty, Father. You forget. Afterward, I will have no station save Brother of the Faith.”

Father’s cool eyes narrow. “Don’t be foolish. You’ll always be a Vael, Sebastian. I’ll have armor made. In Starkhaven’s colors. You’re royalty. You _ought_ to be set apart. They ought to know who you are. Who _we_ are. How far our reach extends. The Chantry will turn a blind eye to the requirement of poverty. They always do if the donation’s big enough.”

“Perhaps with gold enough, they’ll turn a blind eye to the vow of chastity as well,” Sebastian remarks. 

A moment later, a hand is twisted in the fabric at Sebastian’s throat, and he finds himself pulled to face his father, eye to eye. He wheezes, reaching for absent breath. “You’re not clever, lad. You’re not half so clever as you think you are. The line of succession is clear. I won’t have you muddying it. Take your vows and _keep them_ , or—”

“Or what?” Sebastian gasps, pulling back just enough to steal a breath and force the words from his aching throat, fear and futility making him brave. “You’ll have me forcibly removed?”

“Don’t tempt me,” his father spits, pushing Sebastian back. He stumbles, but catches himself before he falls. “You’re still my son. Do as you’re told.”

“Fine,” Sebastian says. “I understand. You’ve made yourself perfectly clear. I’ll do as you ask. I’ll take bloody vows. But I don’t want to see you again, Father. Not ever. That’s the price to buy my good behavior.”

“Vows. You’ll correspond with your brothers. You’ll keep Starkhaven’s interests at heart. You’ll wear my colors.”

He doesn’t wait for Sebastian to respond. It doesn’t matter. They both know what has happened; they both know the words implied but unspoken.

 _Oh, I’ll wear your bloody armor,_ Sebastian thinks, watching his father walk away from him for the last time, _to remind myself what I do not wish to become._

#

Sebastian recognizes Fenris at once. Even apart from the white hair, the elf has a distinctive way of carrying himself. Fenris is strong. He’s a warrior. But as long as Sebastian’s known him, Fenris has also been _hunted._ It’s something Sebastian wishes he didn’t understand. Something of the slave he was lingers in the curve of Fenris’ spine and the set of his shoulders.

Also, Sebastian doesn’t know many elves who carry blades nearly as long as they are tall. It’s something of a giveaway.

Fenris stares up at the statue of Andraste in the nave. A pair of lay sisters titter behind their hands as they ogle, but if Fenris notices, he chooses to appear indifferent. He turns his head slightly as Sebastian approaches, however, and though he can’t quite put a name to it, there is something different about the elf’s expression.

Lighter, Sebastian thinks. _Freer._ As if some impossible weight has been lifted.

“It is done,” Fenris says, his voice low and rough, but for once not with anger.

Sebastian shakes his head. “Fenris?”

“Danarius is dead. By my hand. It is done.”

The lay sisters, obviously eavesdropping, abruptly cease their giggling and scurry away, feigning work to do.

Fenris ignores them, raising his right hand and curling the clawed fingers of his gauntlets toward his palm. “I am a free man. Truly.”

“How does it feel?”

Dropping his hand back to his side, Fenris lifts his shoulders in a faint shrug. “The same. Different. Confusing. I do not know.”

“I am… I am glad. For you. And for those he would have hurt, had he lived.”

Fenris looks toward the statue again, musingly. “I do not entirely believe as you believe, Sebastian,” he says, as if this is something he’s given a great deal of thought to. “It would require something of me that I am unwilling to give. But _she_ is a worthy symbol, I think. Andraste. I will grant you that.”

Sebastian nods. This, too, is something he almost thinks he understands. “What will you do now?”

A strange look passes over Fenris’ face a moment before his hair falls to cover his eyes, as though this is a question he has not considered. “I do not know. I imagine I will remain, for a time. Kirkwall has become… familiar.”

Sebastian doesn’t want to say it, but he does. “Hawke would miss you.”

“She has been a good friend to me, for all my shortcomings. Better, I think, than I deserved.” 

 _Friend_ , Sebastian thinks, wondering, as the old, familiar seed of jealousy put out tendrils in his gut.

Fenris turns, facing him. “Surely you understand, Sebastian.”

What he understands is that Hawke has never—to his knowledge—turned away from Fenris, not as long as she’s known him. Fenris has been present for virtually every battle Hawke has fought. He is ever-present at her right hand. He makes Hawke laugh. More than that, Hawke makes _him_ laugh; no small feat.

A faint smile pulls at the corners of Fenris’ mouth. “Perhaps you do not, after all.”

“How is…” Sebastian pauses, swallowing the words.

Fenris notices, of course. The elf’s gaze is calculating. “You do not always see eye to eye,” he says quietly. “And yet she misses your counsel. As doubtless you miss hers.” With a final glance toward the statue, Fenris turns away. He takes three steps (and Sebastian can already _see_ the change in his posture: back straighter, shoulders lifted, neck unbent) before turning and saying, “Diamondback tomorrow.”

Fenris takes another step before Sebastian calls out after him. “Fenris? Why did you come?”

Fenris does smile one of his rare smiles at this. “You, too, have been a good friend to me. For all my shortcomings.” Then he chuckles. “You have not yet decided about Starkhaven. I have not yet decided about Kirkwall. Perhaps I shall take you up on that offer, one day. Come to cards, Sebastian.”

Sebastian nods as Fenris turns away again, already knowing he will.


	22. V is for Vows

**V is for Vows**

There’s a vigil and a ceremony and afterward he’s Brother Sebastian.

The Grand Cleric speaks. So does he. Nothing mystical. Nothing all that out of the ordinary.

In the end, after all, they’re only words.

They change nothing. 

And everything.

It’s not that he doesn’t believe in the words. He does. He’s almost certain he’d one day have made the choice to speak them, even without his father’s insistence. He has found a home in the Chantry. Unlike his own parents, the Grand Cleric never asks him to be anything but who he is. Faults and all. It is not about pretending. It’s not about jockeying for position or covering one’s missteps, hoping they won’t be noticed. Sometimes doubt is as much a part of belief as faith, he finds. It opens doors; it leads one toward questions deserving of answers. Or _thought_ , at least, if answers prove elusive, as they so often do.

With the passing of time, he’s grown accustomed to solitude. He rarely longs for the old days, the raucous tavern evenings, the willing bodies. Those memories feel hollow when he recalls them now, almost as though they belong to a different person. A person who’d felt lonely, no matter how many people he paid to attend him. In the chantry he is often alone, but not nearly as lonely as he once was.

He loses himself in the Chant. And he finds himself.

And that has nothing whatsoever to do with his father.

In spite of whatever strings his father’s largesse has pulled, Sebastian does give up the little wealth he’s carried with him. He does his best to put worldly things behind, though after nearly a decade, he really hasn’t much in the way of worldly things anymore. He keeps his bow, and he wears the armor his father had made. It is simple enough to put on—a concession in part, he supposes, to the lack of squire or page to help him dress. The white enamel almost glows with its own light, and the gold gleams. It would have made fine armor for a prince of Starkhaven, but it’s entirely out of place for anyone called Brother. 

He’s not used to the weight of it, or the way the straps pull, or the feel of linen and padding and mail in place of soft cloth. The face on the belt-buckle judges him, and he’s not certain if it’s Andraste’s criticism or his father’s he’s imagining. He’s not certain what purpose a fur-lined hood holds for someone who spends his days (almost entirely) indoors.

Though, in that case, _armor_ doesn’t make sense, either. It’s a strange affectation, and so, instead of feeling as though he’s broken cleanly from his old life, his Starkhaven life, his prince’s life, Sebastian still feels caught, trapped, subject to his father’s whims.

He speaks his vows— _I swear to live a life of service to the Maker, to take no bride but Andraste_ —hampered by the weight of the old life, even as he tries so desperately to swear fealty to the new.

The next day, he leaves the armor on its stand and chooses robes instead, almost convincing himself his father meant the fine mail and plate only for special occasions, feast days.

He knows this isn’t true, but it’s an easy lie to believe. 

The lies that coincide with desires always are.

#

The card game doesn’t happen.

Instead, Sebastian finds himself caught up in the mad rush as Hawke rescues Bethany from the blighted idiots who somehow thought _kidnapping the Champion’s sister_ might somehow woo her to their cause. 

And in spite of everything, _Maker_ , he can’t help the horror he feels as his arrows fell not slavers or bandits, but templars.

It’s him and Varric and Fenris who end up on the Wounded Coast, their game of Diamondback abruptly aborted in the face of Hawke’s distress. Too many archers. Unbalanced. They’re facing so many _mages_ with none of their own.

And Hawke is heedless of her own safety. She fights as much with the knife at her belt—not her strong suit—as her bow, and Sebastian dares not take his eyes from her. His bow is responsible for saving her life a dozen times, but she does not so much as glance at him.

He has never seen her like this before. It’s terrifying.

And then the beach. The prone figure. Dark hair spilling across the pale sand. Hawke, usually so even-tempered, usually so willing to talk, is in a fury the like of which Sebastian’s never seen.

The battle is hard and bloody. In the end, even he’s had to cast aside his bow in favor of his inadequate knife; the fighting’s too close, and he’s nearly out of arrows. When the battle’s done, they stand panting in the sand, blood-drenched and exhausted. Varric’s left arm is bleeding badly. Sebastian can only hope the blood on Fenris belongs to the fallen. Hawke goes instantly at her sister’s side. Sebastian can’t hear what Hawke says, but he sees Bethany’s arms reach up to curl behind her sister’s back, and it is Bethany who runs a soothing hand down Hawke’s blood-matted hair.

They are just getting to their feet again when the Knight-Captain appears. Sebastian, still unwilling to take his eyes from Hawke, sees her hand tighten around Bethany’s even as the other twitches toward her knife.

This, he thinks, will be a harder battle, a harder choice. _These_ templars are doing their jobs; they are not holding court with traitors and blood mages. _Cullen_ is doing his job. Perhaps he is not quite a friend, but he has become a kind of ally. Sebastian does not want to see him killed. This is a fight that will draw clearer lines, ones that, once crossed, will not be stepped over again. It will be too late.

Sebastian clutches his knife hard, and shoots a brief glance toward Varric. The dwarf looks as unsettled as Sebastian feels. Fenris stands ready, his huge blade still in his hands, but the set of his shoulders contains a weariness beyond that of having done battle.

He knows they will stand with Hawke. Even with their doubts.

He knows he will, too, Maker save him.

Before anything can go wrong, before blood can be spilled that no one wants shed, Bethany pulls her sister close and whispers in her ear. Hawke shakes her head—in disbelief, Sebastian thinks. The grip on Bethany’s hand tightens, but the mage only presses a kiss to her sister’s cheekbone and tugs her fingers free. And then she’s gone. Again. She doesn’t look back.

Sebastian has never _watched_ a heart break before. He sees it then, in every line of Hawke’s body, in the curve of her spine and the cant of her head. He sees it in her eyes, and in the tracks her tears make, though the tears themselves are silent. He sees it in the way her fingers spasm at her side, deprived of touch.

“Hawke,” he says. Gently, at first, but when she doesn’t so much as blink, he repeats her name more loudly, more firmly. “ _Hawke._ ”

Nothing. She stares at the empty stretch of sand where Bethany had stood at the Knight-Captain’s side. Where Bethany had walked away.

Varric’s still bleeding, and they’re woefully underprepared, given the battle they just fought and how quickly they’d been forced to leave Kirkwall. “Fenris,” Sebastian says. “Go with Varric. We’ll be right behind you.”

A frown creases Fenris’ brow. “Separating is not wise.”

Hawke says nothing. Her fingers twitch. Her breath hitches.

“Nah, Broody,” Varric says with obviously forced levity, “Choir Boy can hold the fort. Maybe we’ll send Aveline back to meet you. With some swords.”

Sebastian nods, only half hearing the exchange.

Hawke says nothing.

Fenris doesn’t look pleased, but he goes. Varric shuffles at his side, a hastily wrapped bandage around his arm, looking paler than Sebastian’s ever seen him.

If Hawke sees them leave, she shows no sign.

“Hawke,” he repeats. “ _Please_. Look at me.”

She sucks in a huge breath like a swimmer who’s been underwater too long, and turns to face him, her pale eyes huge amongst the blood-spatter. “She’s gone.”

“She’s safe. That’s what matters. She’s safe.”

He doesn’t think Hawke’s even aware of the way she’s shaking her head, as if she’s desperate to make all the words make sense but _cannot,_ so she’s stuck merely chasing them around and around _._ Every few moments she’ll pause, but then she shakes her head again. “She’s not safe. No one’s _safe_. I could have _protected her_ , now.” Hawke’s tone rises with every sentence, strangled and angry and so very distressed, bordering on panic. “What’s the _point_? What’s the point of… of any of it? _Champion_? House Amell? What’s all this _for_ , if I can’t even keep her safe? She’s the only family I have _left._ The only promise I ever made worth keeping was to keep her _safe_ and I _can’t_.” Hawke reaches up, scraping her fingers through her tangled hair, pulling hard. Desperate. “I _promised._ I promised and I failed and I don’t know why any of the rest of this matters. I just don’t know.”

He doesn’t have the right words. He doesn’t have any words at all.

She turns and takes three steps away from him, away from Kirkwall. Drawing her knife, she throws it. And she _screams._ The knife sticks in the sand and Hawke wraps her arms tight around herself. 

“Fine,” she says, in answer to a question he didn’t ask.

“Hawke…”

Moving woodenly, she walks to retrieve her knife. Then she returns to his side. The broken heart is still evident in her eyes, but she’s already replacing her other armor, piece by piece. In a few moments she— _Hawke_ —will be gone, and only _Champion_ will remain. “It’s fine,” she says, numbly, like nothing’s fine at all. “I have all of Kirkwall to protect, don’t I?”

He wants to reach for her, to _soothe_ her (though he knows he can’t, not really), but his hands hang heavy at his sides. Helpless. Torn. 

“You… you’re not alone. Hawke. You’re not alone.” 

The shoulders straighten. The chin lifts. The brows raise. Piece by piece by piece. “Am I not?” She shakes her head again, but this is firm, and not at all like the helpless distress of only moments earlier. Her voice, when she speaks, is commanding. All the doubt gone. All the misery papered over. “Come on. We can catch up with them, if we hurry.”

Then she, too, walks away without looking back, and Sebastian is left to follow, and to wonder if the something that broke in her can ever be mended.

It wounds him to think it cannot.


	23. W is for Worry

**W is for Worry**

The rumors coming out of Ferelden are troubling, to say the least.

He dismisses most of them entirely. They’re too improbable. They have the air of stories told to frighten misbehaving children. Perhaps Orlais seeks to regain what it lost thirty years back. It seems an ugly, but perhaps effective, tactic: sowing seeds of doubt, planting whispers of a Blight to induce panic amongst the peasantry. An unsettled nation is easier to invade. Supernatural enemies are more terrifying than chevaliers and pikemen. The chevaliers were chased back over a border, once. An archdemon is a tricksier foe. No one alive has defeated one. With people looking to the skies, they’ll forget to watch their backs.

Rumor of Grey Wardens runs hand in hand with rumor of darkspawn, and though Sebastian idolized stories of the Wardens when he was a child, he sees no reason to believe these tales any more than he believes whole towns are being overrun by a horde in the south of Ferelden or that Ferelden’s king is dead. All that’s missing are the griffons, and the stories he’s hearing could be those from his childhood. It only makes sense to combat wild tales of horrors with equally wild tales of heroes.

Sometimes, though, he does wonder what grain of truth all these tales are hiding.

He doesn’t begin to understand the reality until the Grand Cleric darkens his door, looking paler than he’s ever seen her, holding a letter in one trembling hand. It’s as though she’s aged overnight, and seeing her so old takes him aback more effectively than any gossip.

His worries deepen as he reads the letter. It is from Ferelden’s Grand Cleric, and if Orlais has ought to do with what’s happening, the Divine hasn’t seen fit to inform her voice in Denerim. More distressing even than that, however, is the news the king’s death is no rumor. Details of the battle at Ostagar are sketchy still, but King Cailan is most certainly dead. His general came home without him, and now Ferelden stands poised on the brink of civil war.

Even all speculation of an encroaching Blight aside, the politician in Sebastian can’t help wondering what will become of the nation, with their king dead heirless, and the Orlesian occupation a not-so-distant memory. He is not certain what role the Free Marches might play in such an altercation, if any. When he realizes he’s already composing a letter to his father in his head, he bites hard on the inside of his cheek and focuses once more on the Grand Cleric.

“What will we do, Your Grace?” he asks, carefully folding the letter again.

“What can we do?” Elthina replies, pushing a hand through her disheveled hair. A little color returns to her cheeks. “We minister. We guide. We are a beacon of the Maker’s Light in a time of darkness. We prepare as best we’re able. I fear we will soon have more mouths than we can possibly feed, and they will be desperate, and far from home.” She sighs. “The Maker sends no storm we cannot weather, with faith enough. Forgive me asking, Sebastian, but I fear I must send you out to beg what donations the nobility of Kirkwall are willing to offer.”

Sebastian bows his head, accepting his fate. The Grand Cleric knows as well as he does how much harder it is to turn down a familiar face, and though he wishes he could leave who he was behind, he cannot. His face is known. His _family_ is known. Many will not risk the potential ire of the prince of Starkhaven by refusing his son. The Harimanns will give something, he’s certain. He’s imagining how he will wheedle coin from the de Launcets when the Grand Cleric pats him lightly on the arm and leaves him again.

He _prays_ he has faith enough to weather this storm. If the rumors are true, they’ll need all the help they can get.

#

He’s not alone.

Sebastian doesn’t know how he knows, precisely. Some prickle at the back of his neck; the hairs rising on his forearms. A feeling. He inches his hand toward his belt-knife, wishing for his bow. 

It’s late. The nave is empty. No. The nave _looks_ empty. Sebastian listens. At first he hears only the rain on the windows and the howl of the wind. Then, a moment later, the rustle of cloth.

At the door, he catches up with the intruder. 

“Anders?”

The mage frowns at him, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. The man looks thin, Sebastian thinks. Thinner even than he was. And haunted. Even with his chin lifted and his jaw set, Anders can do nothing to hide the shadows under his eyes. Or within them.

It’s an incongruous sight, Anders within the chantry. Voluntarily. Try as he might, familiar as Anders is, Sebastian can’t shake the certainty something is terribly wrong.

“What are you doing here? Is Hawke with you?”

A bitter, unpleasant expression takes the mage’s face; he looks as though he’s bitten into something rotten. “No. She’s not.”

“Are you… looking for me?” Sebastian can’t imagine _why_ , but he’s also never seen Anders in the chantry unless it’s trailing at Hawke’s heels, complaining the entire time. “For something?”

Anders scrapes the fingernails of one hand up and down the opposite forearm, and doesn’t meet Sebastian’s eyes. “You’re out with Hawke a lot.”

Sebastian blinks, trying to follow the change of subject. “I suppose.”

It goes unsaid that Anders is not. Sebastian doesn’t know the details, but the one time he’d asked, Hawke had silenced him with the kind of look that said Sebastian would be equally as unwelcome if he pushed her for information she didn’t want to share.

“That’s good,” Anders says, gazing past Sebastian down the long hallway, toward the statue. “It’s better if you’re not—no. How is she?”

Sebastian’s brow furrows. “Anders…”

The mage shakes his head before reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Forget I asked.”

“Is _that_ why you’re here? To ask about Hawke?” With no answer forthcoming, Sebastian sighs. “I’m worried about her, if you must know. The Knight-Commander tugs on one arm, and the First Enchanter pulls the other. She’s caught between.”

“She’ll have to choose eventually,” Anders whispers, face still mostly hidden by his hand. “We all do.”

Anders’ hand trembles as it reaches out, tugging the heavy door open. A gust of wind blows rain indoors, spattering them both.

“Anders, what happened?” Sebastian asks. "What _are_ you doing here?"

The mage’s shoulders stiffen, and Sebastian sees a shudder run the length of the man’s spine. “She made a choice. I made a different one.”

Before Sebastian can press for further clarification, Anders is gone.

Sebastian tells himself the chill he feels is only because of the wind and the rain the open door had let in, and nothing whatsoever to do with the heavy emphasis Anders had placed on the word _choice_.


	24. X is for Xenophobia

**X is for Xenophobia**

If any doubts remain about the seriousness of the situation in Ferelden, they are erased as soon as the flood of refugees arrives. Things across the Waking Sea must be worse even than a dead king or a potential civil war. People don’t leave _everything_ unless they have no other choice.

Though it’s clear the city has reached its capacity, still they come, cramming into the warrens of Darktown, living two or three families to a hovel in Lowtown.

And they are _desperate_. Desperate and terrified and hungry and poor. They have nothing, and there isn’t enough to go around.

Sebastian almost— _almost_ —wishes he were wearing his armor (still hidden under a spare sheet on a rack in his little room, taking up too much space. He can’t seem to part with it) when he’s attacked in the marketplace. He lets the band of angry, ragamuffin children steal his bread and prays it will go to good use, though its loss means he has nothing to deliver to families counting on the Chantry’s charity.

Thinking to beg coin to _buy_ bread (though the price of a loaf is nearly ten times what it was before the refugees began arriving and supply soon outstripped demand), Sebastian turns toward the estates in Hightown. Flora has proven a generous donor, though Sebastian is certain she doesn’t entirely have her parents’ _express_ consent for the gifts she makes in their name.

At the Harimann estate, however, he is turned away. It is a polite dismissal, but no less firm for all that it’s civil. When he asks to speak with Flora, the servant lies (Sebastian knows the look of a lie) and says her mistress is indisposed. 

Confused, a little hurt, and with damnably empty hands, Sebastian returns to the chantry. In the courtyard, he breaks up a scuffle—several natives of Kirkwall going toe-to-toe with a few tired Fereldan beggars. Amidst epithets about the stink of dogs and guesses at illegitimate parentage, Sebastian manages to put a hand on the shoulder of the loudest, crudest offender.

“That’s enough, man,” Sebastian says, aiming for calm though frustration and rage prickle just beneath the surface. “There’s no call for that.”

“No call?” the man snarls. “No _call_? The city’s sinking under the weight of these… these _bottom-feeders_ , and there’s no call telling them to go back home? I think we’ve every right.” The man jerks out from under Sebastian’s hand and spits on the ground, the saliva glistening near the hem of Sebastian’s robe. “But then, ‘course you’d be sympathetic. You’re foreign too, aren’t ya? The _lot_ of you go home, and leave our bread for Kirkwall, and those who _earn it_.”

The man stalks away, and his compatriots follow. The arguments are growing ever more heated, and Sebastian fears there are not nearly templars or guards enough to keep the peace. The Fereldans thank him, but he can tell by the hungry, haunted look in their eyes they’re waiting for more, and he has nothing to give. Not even promises. Not even hope.

He finds the Grand Cleric in her office. Through the open door, he can hear the Knight-Commander. “You wanted my opinion, Your Grace, and I’ve given it. Forgive me if it’s not to your liking, but we simply haven’t the _numbers_. We _must_ close tour gates. Let them go on to Ostwick or Hercinia.”

Elthina sounds tired, and sad. “Neither Ostwick nor Hercinia have Kirkwall’s resources, Meredith. You know—”

Sebastian backs away slowly, silently. He doesn’t think either has seen him, and he doesn’t particularly want to be caught eavesdropping.

Meredith’s next words come at a shout they can probably hear down in the nave. “ _Kirkwall_ doesn’t have Kirkwall’s resources! We’re harboring parasites. They’ll pick our bones clean and then where will we be?”

“That’s enough, Meredith.”

Sebastian shivers slightly at the Grand Cleric’s tone.

“Your Grace—”

“You have made your point. Maker forgive me, but I do _understand_. We haven’t food enough to feed those already within our walls. Do as you must.”

As it happens, Sebastian needn’t have worried about being noticed. When the Knight-Commander sweeps into the hall, she doesn’t spare him a second glance. He watches her go and wonders just how many innocents she’s condemned to die.

And yet more than that, he wonders where they will find food and shelter enough for those already within the city’s walls.

#

Though he knows she’s more than capable of doing it, Sebastian’s still startled every time Hawke manages to slip silently up behind him. This time, it’s in the Hightown marketplace. He blames his distraction on the price of vegetables.

Hawke begins speaking as though they’re in the middle of a conversation already. Perhaps they are.

“I don’t think I’m right for it,” she says. “Oh, I’d muddle through, I suppose. I’m good at muddling. Too good at muddling, I think Meredith might say, but lead? In a _formal capacity_? They’d never accept me. Not truly. I’m _Fereldan._ ”

He pays the merchant and settles the produce in the basket over his arm. Hawke reaches into the basket and plucks out an apple, polishing it on his sleeve before taking a bite.

“You mean the conversation I had with Aveline, I suppose? About the possibility of you stepping in as Viscount?”

She laughs as if he’s made a (not particularly amusing) jest, and shakes her head. Her hair gleams copper in the sunlight. Caught staring, he glances away, toward the pilfered apple still resting in the palm of her hand. She gives the fruit a speculative look before saying, “Champion is one thing. It’s like being… being a prize pony, trotted about for special occasions with ribbons in her hair. I’m _barely_ an Amell.”

“You _are_ an Amell.”

She scowls at him. “Even if I _am_ , I don’t think memories are as short as you’d like them to be, Sebastian. You know the history of the Free Marches better than I. Everyone remembers the last time the Amells made a bid for the Viscountcy of Kirkwall. Everyone remembers why that bid failed. The nobility’s willing to play nice while I’m the show pony, but I don’t think they want me as… head… stallion? I’ve… lost my metaphor a little, haven’t I? But you know what I mean.”

She moves to throw the almost-untouched apple, but he snatches it out of the air. This, at least, earns a smile from her, accompanied by an embarrassed little shrug. He takes a bite from the other side of the fruit, chews slowly, and swallows before saying, “You do more than trot about on feastdays with ribbons in your hair, Hawke. You know it. I know it. They know it. You have earned the city’s respect. Time and time again. It is false modesty to think otherwise.”

She rolls her eyes, but he doesn’t miss the faint blush rising in her cheeks. “Fine. Maybe I’m less a show pony and more a… a warhorse, then. But a warhorse doesn’t lead nations. Or… cities. I—I’m not cut out for it. No matter what stories Varric makes up about my exploits. A warhorse just… kills people.”

He stops, stunned, but she carries on several more steps before looking around to find him no longer at her side. Shaking his head, he catches up and puts one hand on her shoulder. “Is that what you think you do, Hawke?” he asks. “It isn’t. It _isn’t._ Perhaps… perhaps you weren’t born to it, but you have a gift. People listen when you talk, and that’s a talent you can use to _save_ lives. I’ve _seen_ you use it to save lives.”

“And you?” she asks abruptly, head bowed slightly, her cheek almost touching the back of his hand where it still rests on her shoulder. “You’d… you’d push me at this life, even though it’s one you’ve turned your back on? You’d send me to the so-called jackals?”

He opens his mouth, but it takes several tries before he can manage words. “You—it’s not—you could do so much _good_.”

Here she tilts her head up. They’re standing close enough he can hear the faint inhale before she speaks. “And you couldn’t?”

Then she’s gone as quickly and silently as she’d come in the first place, ducking out from under his hand and leaving him alone, with only a bite out of an apple and a whirl of unsettling thoughts to prove she’d ever been there at all.


	25. Y is for Yoke

**Y is for Yoke**

He’s in the garden when she finds him, putting arrows in a distant target and singing old folk songs. The sun is warm on his shoulders, and he thinks the skin on the back of his neck might burn if he isn’t careful, but he doesn’t care. The wind ruffles his hair, gentle as warm fingers.

It’s a beautiful day.

“Sebastian?”

He stops singing at once, and turns, clutching his bow with suddenly trembling fingers. Something about her voice has his heart in his throat and the blood pounding in his ears. “Your Grace? Is something the matter?”

She shakes her head weakly. Then she nods. Closing her eyes, she bows her head and he _sees_ the shudder run through her. He’s at her side in an instant, bow clattering to the ground so he can grasp her under the arms and keep her from falling. She reaches out and grips his biceps tightly, but she doesn’t collapse. “I need to sit down,” she says, her voice hardly louder than a whisper. “We need to sit down.”

“Take my arm; we’ll go inside.”

Again she shakes her head. “No, child. Let’s stay out here. Under the sun. Just for a while. Just for a little while.”

He swallows past the tightness in his throat, and guides her very carefully, very slowly, to a bench beneath the spreading branches of an old oak. He blames the shade for the shiver down his spine.

When they are seated, the Grand Cleric releases his arm and folds her hands in her lap so tightly he sees her knuckles whiten with the strain. 

“Your Grace?” he repeats. “ _Is_ something the matter?”

“Yes,” she replies, and he hears the tears in her voice. He nearly leaps to his feet, suddenly desperate to be anywhere but here. “Forgive me, child. I—I’ve had a letter. From the… from the Revered Mother in Starkhaven. I’m afraid—” Unclenching her hands, she reaches up and covers her eyes, inhaling deeply. “Oh, Sebastian, I’m afraid—”

“Is it my father?” he interrupts. “Has there been—he’s not ill, is he? Was there an accident? Surely… surely someone would have sent word. Maker, it’s not my nephew, is it? He—he’s always been frail. It’s not? It’s not him?”

The Grand Cleric’s shoulders shake. She visibly struggles to regain her control, but she does manage it. As she straightens her shoulders and lifts her chin, he finds his own slumping, like a child preparing for a blow he cannot possibly avoid. 

“There was an attack.”

“No,” he says.

She turns slightly, reaching for his hand. He flinches away. He sees now how red her eyes are, how tear-mottled her cheeks.

“No,” he repeats. “It’s not possible. Starkhaven is not at war.”

“Your family—”

“No!” He rises, stumbling backward, catching his heel on the hem of his robe. Abruptly graceless, he falls backward, breaking his fall with one hand. His wrist screams and stones dig into the flesh of his palm, but the pain is nothing. The Grand Cleric sinks to her knees beside him, her pale eyes once again bright with tears.

“I don’t know how to tell you, child—”

“No,” he pleads, though nows it’s not the Grand Cleric’s words he wishes to stop.

Whatever she’s about to say, it’s too late. He’s too late.

_No._

In a whisper, Elthina continues, “There were no survivors.”

The pain of the stones still digging into his palm multiplies until his arm throbs with it. He feels as though someone has him by the throat; he can’t breathe. Even with the sun on his face, he feels _cold._ Deathly cold. Unfathomably cold. Birds sing brightly in the branches above them; they’re loud, loud as thunder beating against the insides of his ears. The astringent scent of elfweed mixes with something else, something cloyingly sweet. Andraste’s Grace, perhaps. The smell is so strong he turns and empties his stomach on the grass, but this brings no relief. Limbs shaking, wrist still aching, he manages to push himself to his hands and knees. 

“No,” he repeats, whispering the word like a prayer even as it screams over and over _and over_ in his head, drowning out even the thunderous birds and the soft murmurs of something he thinks is meant to be soothing falling from the Grand Cleric’s parted lips. “It’s not possible. There’s been a mistake.”

“Sebastian…”

“Stop _talking_ ,” he shouts, scrambling away from her, heedless of the pain in his arm but not able to avoid the pain pinching at his heart. “They have _guards_. It’s not possible.”

“It was a band of mercenaries,” the Grand Cleric explains. “They came in the night. Infiltrated the palace. The… the Revered Mother writes that anyone—servant, guardsman, staff—who dared stand against them was…”

“My parents. My brothers.”

She bows her head. “Their wives. Their children. The guards who stood watch and the servants who attended them. It was… swift.”

“Swift,” he repeats numbly. “Oh, Maker. The children. The children. _Why?_ ”

“I… I do not know. But I think it best you stay safe within these walls for the time being, child. Go nowhere without templars. Those who did this were… thorough. I doubt you are a thread they will be content to leave untrimmed.”

“No,” he says, pushing himself roughly to his feet. For a moment he fears his legs will not hold him, but they do. “I will not hide here, waiting for a knife in the night. And I’ll not surround myself with templars doomed to lose their lives on my behalf. No.”

Her voice takes on a harder edge, a more desperate edge, “Sebastian, you cannot possibly think to take them on yourself—”

“I’ll find help.”

“We are the _Chantry_. We do not take part in secular political affairs.”

“Really?” he asks sharply, striding over to retrieve his fallen bow. The weapon feels real. Sturdy. Like it won’t fail him. Like it’s the only thing that will not fail him. “Tell that to Perrin Threnhold. If _you_ will not help me, I shall find someone else who will.”

“Sebastian…”

He hears her call out again and again, but he does not listen and he does not stop.

He sees nothing as he stalks through the gardens, through the kitchen, through the chantry halls. If people try to speak, he does not hear them. He hears only the blood pounding, pounding, _pounding_ in his head; he sees faces swimming before his eyes he will never again see in life.

In his room, he pulls the sheet from the armor stand. Hands steady even as his stomach lurches and his knees shake, Sebastian prepares. Piece by piece, he readies himself. Piece by piece, he sets the brother aside and dons the white and gold armor. 

If this is the mantle he must wear to see justice done, he will wear it. 

It’s heavy and it’s cold, but in the armor, he is Prince of Starkhaven.

Perhaps his father knew what he was doing all along.

And when he is attired as befits his station, he pulls forth pen and paper and ink, and begins to write.

He’s not a fool, after all. He knows very well he won’t be able to take out a band of mercenaries on his own.

#

“And so you’ve come to plead with me again, have you, child?”

The Grand Cleric doesn’t so much as look up from her papers. She merely sets one letter aside and picks up another, gesturing with her other hand for him to take the seat opposite her.

“It is folly to remain when you know you are unsafe, Your Grace.”

She makes a noncommittal sound under her breath.

“I am entirely in earnest, Your Grace.”

Here she does glance up, though he can see by the smile—the faint, maddening smile—she has no intention whatsoever of heeding him. “I know you are, Sebastian. You are _always_ entirely in earnest, no matter what you say. No matter what you do. Even if those words and actions run counter to words and actions you spoke or took just hours earlier.” She sighs, leaning forward on her arms. “If my life is in danger here, it’s in danger _everywhere_. If I stay, I remain a symbol for Kirkwall—for the Free Marches—to look to. If I flee? If I flee, I am only a coward. I become an object of derision and mockery.”

He clenches his hands into frustrated fists. “It has been years since you visited Starkhaven. Go there. No one will deride you for visiting another city in your domain.”

“Starkhaven,” she repeats mildly.

He grimaces. “Or Ostwick or Ansburg or Wycome. The city doesn’t matter, so long as it’s not Kirkwall.”

“Oh, Sebastian. My sweet, angry boy. The city _does_ matter. How can you—you of all people—not see?”

“I do see,” he insists. “You’re in danger. And I would not have you… I would not see you injured.”

“You’re afraid of my death,” she says, pulling no punches. She speaks the words as easily as she might order a pot of tea from the kitchens.

“Your Grace—”

“And so you may be, child, but I am not. And you must grant me that. Because my life is my own, just as yours is your own. I think, perhaps, you forget that I am not—in point of fact—your _responsibility_.”

She reaches across her desk and curls her fingers toward him. After a moment, he extends his own hand to clasp hers. “Don’t think my reluctance to heed your warning—to act on it—in any way reflects on you, Sebastian. You cannot know how I treasure your care of me.” She squeezes his hand briefly. “You travel with Hawke enough to know, as I do, how tenuous the situation remains in Kirkwall. For the time being, I must stand between the First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander, lest they tear each other to shreds. And as to the rest? We pray.”

“We _pray_.”

He doesn’t mean to sound angry. He knows he does anyway.

Elthina doesn’t chide him. She chuckles, instead. “Do you remember the night we met, Sebastian? I do. I remember the sad little boy I found taking refuge in the chapel, even though he was desperately angry with the Maker.”

“I remember. I told you prayers were boring.”

“And I said sometimes they were angry.” She meets his eyes and holds tight to his hand. “This is, perhaps, a time for angry prayers. Kirkwall has become a cruel place, and an unfair one, and if I’m not here to intercede on its behalf, who will?”

“I… I understand. Your Grace.”

“I know you do, child. I know you do.” She shakes her head. “I wish you did not know half so well.”

“The Maker sends no storm we cannot weather, with faith enough.”

She smiles at this, and nods, but he sees the cost of weathering too many storms on her face, and in her eyes, and finds his own lips will not pull up to answer her.

He knows, like her, he’s not going anywhere. 


	26. Z is for Zero

**Z is for Zero**

Only when he hears the laughter does he realize how long it’s been since the sound of unfettered mirth has reached his ears. 

No one laughs when he is around (or if they do, his appearance puts an abrupt end to it). No one meets his eyes. Conversations end when he enters rooms, and people he’d thought friends—practically family ( _no, Sebastian, don’t think about family, you mustn’t think about family_ )—make excuses to be anywhere but where he is.

He’s not sure if it’s because of what happened in Starkhaven, or because of the way he turned his back on his vows when he found out about it.

It has been weeks since… since the garden. The white and gold armor rests as easily on his shoulders now as ever his priest’s robes did, and though he still sleeps in his little chantry room (the Grand Cleric does not deny him this, though she makes no secret of her disappointment with his decisions), he is not quite _part_ of things here the way he once was.

It is a place to sleep, but it isn’t home. Not really. Not anymore. Perhaps not ever again.

The source of the laughter is a woman he vaguely recognizes. He hasn’t made her acquaintance, but he’s seen her at services, usually accompanied by an older woman, and sometimes by a nervous-looking dark-haired girl he assumes is her sister. Neither is with her now. Instead, she’s keeping company with a motley group: a white-haired but young elf, marked by strange tattoos and carrying a sword nearly as long as he is tall; a distractingly well-endowed woman who is, if he’s not mistaken, wearing no pants, but who is definitely sporting a pair of dangerous-looking daggers; and Varric Tethras, whom Sebastian has never had the pleasure of meeting, but whose reputation precedes him. It is the dwarf, he thinks, who has made the woman laugh; she reaches out and punches him lightly on the shoulder even as she checks her gaiety.

He’s heard (always whispers, always second- or third-hand tales) Varric might be a person he should talk to about his… concerns. Evidently he’s a man with… _contacts._ Sebastian is trying to think of a polite way to introduce himself, when _they_ approach _him_. He’s so startled he almost doesn’t hear it when the woman explains she’s killed the Flint Company mercenaries on his behalf.

He blinks, uncomprehending, only then noticing the bow at her back (fine workmanship, though well-worn; she fletches her arrows white, like he does) and the ease with which she wears her leather armor. It’s practically a second skin. The dark-haired woman (definitely not wearing pants) snickers, and Sebastian forces himself to stop staring and find words.

He stumbles through a conversation, answering the woman’s questions even as he tries to make sense of the things she’s saying. He feels he’s always a sentence or two behind the words she’s speaking. Dead. All of them. And dead means they won’t be coming for _him_. Something tight loosens in his chest, like a fist unclenching its death-grip from around his heart, and when she says she hopes he, at least, sleeps easier knowing the mercenaries are dead, he laughs a nervous, awkward, relieved little laugh and says he hopes he will. It sounds strange to his own ears. Nothing like her laughter had sounded just moments ago. But it’s a step. It’s a tiny step. It’s a tourniquet to slow the bleeding. It’s a few stitches to help close the gaping wound.

It’s something almost like healing.

He drops what little money he has into her hands and walks away, already contemplating what he’ll say to the Viscount, already wondering whose support he can count on to back his claim.

Only when he’s out in the sunshine, halfway to Viscount’s Keep, does he remember he didn’t even find out her _name._

#

There can be no half-measures. 

_Blessed be the souls--_

There can be no turning back.

_Blessed be the souls of the faithful—_

There can be no peace.

_Blessed be the souls of the faithful that they ascend to Your right hand._

The souls of the faithful. Sebastian cannot grasp the magnitude of what has happened. Even as he extends his hand, even as he whispers the prayers over and over and over, even as he hears words traded—Meredith’s words, Orsino’s words, Hawke’s words, _the abomination’s_ words, his own mouth opens, his own words fall, words words words—he cannot make sense of what he has seen.

“I removed the chance of compromise, because there _is_ no compromise.”

_Blessed be the souls—oh Maker—oh Maker, no—_

He is five years old and his baby sister doesn’t make it. He’s eleven, and Pup dies with another dog’s jaws around his throat. He’s fifteen, watching his father cry over his grandfather’s corpse. He’s twenty-seven, turning out his stomach in the chantry gardens.

He is all these things, and yet it’s worse. Everything is breaking. Everything is broken. The whole world will burn. The stink of smoke in the air. Worse. So much worse. All of Kirkwall a pyre, and only he left alive to speak the words.

_Blessed be the souls of the faithful—_

Is this what it feels like, he wonders, when Fenris reaches his glowing hand into a chest and _twists_ the heart from its bindings? Is this what it feels like?

But this pain does not end. It goes on. It goes on and on and on.

_Blessed be the souls of the faithful that they ascend to Your right hand._

The abomination sits sullen on an overturned crate, hands between his knees, head bowed.

So thin. So haunted. So weary. He is the picture of regret, of penitence.

Just a picture.

She’s angry. She’s not angry _enough._

She’s not angry about the right things.

When she tells Anders to go, Sebastian cannot— _cannot, cannot, cannot_ —believe his ears.

Is this what it feels like? It cannot feel worse. He cannot imagine it feeling worse.

“Do not interfere, Sebastian,” she snaps, as if his is not the home lost and the family slain.

Again. _Again._

Do not interfere, as though he means _nothing_ to her. After everything. After _everything_. As though he is merely an irritation, a voice of contention, a spoiled child putting his nose into his parents’ business. A nuisance. A nobody.

Perhaps that’s all he’s ever been.

No more. No more. No more of this.

The dead deserve better.

The dead deserve better than this.

The dead deserve better than _her._

“I will bring such an army with me on my return that there’ll be nothing left of Kirkwall for these maleficarum to rule.”

Do not interfere.

“I thought I knew you, Hawke.”

There can be no half-measures.

“I swear to you, I will come back and find your precious Anders.”

There can be no turning back.

“I will teach him what true justice is.”

There can be no peace.


End file.
